Interactive Fantasy 4 - Web (14262881)

interactive fantasy 1.
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interactive
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issue 4
CONTENTS
3 Editorial
OVERVIEWS
8 Storycrafting by John Tode
TECHNOLOGY
16 Virtual Reality by Kay Dekker and Michael Tovey
21 Cyber-Performances by Kurt Lancaster
32 Literary Role-playing in Cyberspace by Phil Goetz
45 Interactive Television by Nathan Cubitt
ANALYSIS
52 Walk a Mile in Someone Else’s Shoes by Mark S. Holsworth
59 The Circle Stands Unbroken by Martin Oliver
68 Horror: Motifs and Actualities by Phil Masters
74 Role-Playing Defined by Mark Frien
77 How You Play the Game by Ben Chessell
DESIGN
86 Everway: Designer’s Notes by Jonathon Tweet
94 Self-Censorship by Lee Gold
106 The Design and Use of Characters by Frank Carver
REVIEWS
118 Aria: Worlds; Aria Roleplay; MasterBook; Rifts supplements;
Mystic China; Thoan; Fantasy Earth; West Point Academy
150 Letters
155 Obituary: Nigel D. Findley
160 Subscription information
interactive fantasy 1.4 1

interactive fantasy Address all correspondence to:
Interactive Fantasy
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Hogshead Publishing Ltd
issue 4
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Editor
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Andrew Rilstone
Interactive Fantasy is intended as a
Writers
forum for the informed discussion
Frank Carver
of role-playing and story-making
Ben Chessel
systems. It is published three times
Nathan Cubitt
a year. The opinions expressed by
Mike Cule
its writers are not necessarily those
Sam Dodsworth
of the editor or publisher and
Key Dekker
should not be taken as such.
Nicole Lindroos Frein
All articles and contents re-
Mark Frein
main the copyright of their re-
Lee Gold
spective creators. Short excerpts
Phil Goetz
are permitted for the purposes of
Mark S, Holsworth
review or reference.
Kurt Lancaster
Interactive Fantasy is interested
Phil Masters
in receiving proposals for articles.
Paul Mason
Prospective writers should send
Patrice Mermoud
an SAE, IRC or email request for
Martin Oliver
more information about require-
Claudia T. Smith
ments, standards and formats.
John Tode
Subscription information can
Michael Tovey
be found on page 160. Advertis-
Jonathan Tweet
ing information and rates can be
Ken Walton
obtained from Andrew Rilstone
at the address above. For infor-
Cover by Mary Fleener
mation on distributing or stock-
ing the magazine, please contact
Interior art reproduced with the
James Wallis at the address above.
kind permission of Wizards of the
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Coast, Inc.
ognizes the status of all product
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Edited in the United Kingdom.
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Editorial
What is the future of role-playing? Each year a number of new games
are launched: some become great commercial successes; some acquire a
small cult following; many fail to capture anyone’s imagination and are
consigned to oblivion. Publishers, of course, claim that their games are
full of exciting new ideas, settings, rules and concepts; even that they are
‘the future of role-playing’. In private, they often hope that they have
created The Next Big Thing. But is there really much scope for inno-
vation in games design? Even if there is, is novelty alone a goal worth
pursuing?
One of the Big Things that these new games sometimes offer is a new
setting—a new world or a new genre in which to set one’s adventures.
Increasingly, the phrase ‘new role-playing game’ means ‘new setting’.
Innovation in this area is rare: indeed the field can look appallingly con-
servative and derivative. Too often what passes for a ‘new idea’ is actually
a cast-off cinema cliché. One could wish that companies would spend
less time imitating last year’s Big New Idea or trying to anticipate next
year’s Big New Idea and more time pursuing excellence irrespective of
novelty. A setting that combined police procedures with monster movies
would not necessarily be worth playing just because no-one had done it
before.
New games also offer rules innovations, and here one does occasion-
ally see the appearance of a genuinely new idea. It’s now nearly ten years
since the Star Wars role-playing game rejected conventional character
design systems in favour of a list of broad, stereotyped character ‘tem-
plates’—an idea that has been imitated by virtually every new system
since then. Rules modifications of this type are really suggestions about
approaches to story-telling. In the case of Star Wars the templates were
a means of encouraging a particular sort of characterization. Such ideas
do not radically change the nature of role-playing, of course: one is still
taking parties of adventurers through scenarios and one is still sitting
around a gaming table asking the referee questions. They might bet-
ter be seen as enabling devices, making it easier for gaming groups to
produce stories of a particular style. In recent years, games designers
have shown more and more ingenuity in devising enabling devices of
this kind.
Occasionally, new games attempt to go further and propose new ways
of role-playing. Ars Magica and Wraith are two examples of this: a game
in which you play several members of a community is different from one
in which you play a homeless adventurer: a game in which you play the

Editorial
evil side of another player’s character is different from one in which each
player plays a single individual. At one level, these sorts of structural
changes are simply another type of enabling device. The shadow-player
in Wraith is a mechanism to create gothic horror. But in so far as these
ideas experiment with the relationship between players and their char-
acters, between players and the referee, and between players and the
story-line, I think that they also have a legitimate claim to be genuine in-
novations. On the other hand, the changes that even these more experi-
mental games make tend to be relatively small and fairly conservative.
Superficially, computers games are changing and developing at a
much faster pace than role-playing games. Indeed, the whole idea that
a new game should supersede an old one has probably been forced on
us by the computer gaming industry where the rate of technological
change is such that even a two-year old product can look extremely tired
and dated.
Looked at as interactive narrative, on the other hand, most comput-
er ‘role playing’ games are decades behind the best table-top games:
they represent not the future of role-playing, but its past. This remains
true even if, as Ray Winninger argued last issue, the vast majority of
table-top role-players do not make use of their game’s potential. For
all its excellence as a game Doom is actually an implementation on a
computer of a rather blood-thirsty D&D dungeon crawl. Computer
‘role-playing’ games have jettisoned character interaction—the one
thing which table-top games do really well—and replaced it with real-
time action, the illusions of speed and movement, and, at best, an all
but imperceptible interface between the player and the virtual world.
There is a sense of immediacy here for which many people are will-
ing to forego the freedom of action or input into the plot which role-
players take for granted.
Doom advertised itself as a ‘virtual reality adventure’. The three di-
mensional, smoothly animated cartoon graphics of the game are indeed
a triumph of the programmers’ art, but the term Virtual Reality is being
applied to them only because it is a popular buzz-word: a shibboleth
meaning the same thing as ‘new’, ‘futuristic’ or ‘the next big thing’. Yet
those of us who value role-playing as a potential art-form may have rea-
son to fear that if true Virtual Reality technology ever becomes available
as a gaming medium it is going to be applied to scenarios that are even
less sophisticated than Doom. Isn’t there a danger that ‘the future of
role-playing’ really come down to more impressive graphics hiding more
and more primitive games?
A book publisher would be foolish if, on being presented with an
excellent novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland; coping with AIDS;
or living on the Home Front in World War II, they replied: ‘There is
already a book on that subject: go and write me something new.’ The

Editorial
would be mad if they said ‘We have already published a novel; go away
and create a new narrative form.’ The question for the writers of fiction
is never ‘is it new?’ but always ‘is it good?’ Gamers would do well to learn
from this. If this year’s Big Thing happened to be a game involving di-
nosaurs, then it would not follow that the market was moving inexorably
into a dinosaur phase, or that reptilian games represented the future of
role-playing. It could just be that people liked Dinosaur: The Extinction
because it was rather a good game.
Real innovation creeps up on us unawares. Probably the single big-
gest innovative idea to come about since the original version of Dungeons
& Dragons was the invention of live-action games. Yet the first LARP cen-
tres were not trumpeted as ‘the future of gaming’. (Nor was first edition
D&D, nor—to give Wizards of the Coast its due—was Magic: the Gather-
ing.) Early LARP fell into precisely the same trap as Doom: it attempted
to produce live-action versions of extremely superficial role-playing
games: dungeon and wilderness quests of a sort which the publishers of
Dungeons & Dragons had long since abandoned. Yet out of LARP grew
what are called ‘freeform’ games: multi-player open-ended games with
relatively little referee input. This was a much more fundamental in-
novation than the idea of replacing a bag of dice with a foam rubber
sword. In terms of the relationship between players, characters, referee
and story-line, freeform games represented a new type of game—or at
any rate, a different one.
Elsewhere this issue, Phil Goetz describes something similar that is
happening in the field of on-line computer games. The earliest Multi-
User Dungeons were implementations of something very like a D&D
dungeon bash: but some MUSHs (‘Multi-User Shared Hallucinations’)
are beginning to use similar technology to run much more sophisticated
role-playing games. These games seem to have all the advantages of
face-to-face gaming, but with a depth and intensity of involvement and
a sense of imaginary community that few conventional games have as-
pired to. Such games are using technology as a tool: as the ultimate ena-
bling device. Surely this is where the future of the hobby lies.
It is tempting to dream about this future. Massive freeform MUSHs
with thousands of players, being run in fully-immersive virtual worlds.
But it is not likely that this fantasy will be realized in our lifetimes. Even
if it were, I do not think that it would supersede or abolish the verbal
role-playing games we know today; any more than freeform games have
superseded Dungeons & Dragons or, for that matter, role-playing games
have made television and the novel obsolete. Whatever new technology
may become available, people will continue to publish new role-playing
games: some good, many bad. Many of these games will have the words
‘This is the future of role-playing’ printed on the box: but I think we can
be fairly sure that, as now, it won’t be true.

Overviews
There are many forms
of interactive fiction and
role-playing; the activities
can be conducted through
many different media and
put to many different uses—
recreational, educational or
therapeutic. In this section the
various fields of interactive
narrative are introduced
and analysed by experts and
leading authorities.
Storycrafting
John Tode describes the Æs Society’s vision of new
type of interactive story-telling: part RPG, part
PBM and part shared-world anthology.
Most people who are involved in role-playing read, and most people who
read want to write. Anyone who wants to write wants to write a bestseller.
It’s a natural enough reaction. Yet how many of us are skilled enough to
be snapped up by a literary agent and rocketed to stardom? Every year
20–30,000 unsolicited manuscripts find their way onto the desks of Brit-
ish publishers. This adds up to a lot of dedicated writers willing to slave
away without any real chance of getting their stories published. All that
most can hope for is to spend inordinate amounts of money on stamps
sending their manuscript all over the country, only to await the return of
a steady flow of rejection slips. I know. I was one of them.
Yet if people are so willing to write, if they are so dedicated that near-
certain rejection is no deterrent, then perhaps there needs to be some
other way for us all to involve ourselves in this age-old art of story-telling.
The concept of storycrafting came from running Æs (pronounced
Ay-us) which was a fantasy play-by-mail game which threw away the rule-
book and concentrated upon the interaction between the characters and
the quasi-medieval world in which they lived. The game was heavily bi-
ased towards story-telling, and players gained points for the content of
their writing, their ideas. All the while they were subconsciously learn-
ing how the imaginary world worked; a place which was a mythological
mirror-world of our own, containing plots and creatures derived from a
huge number of folk-tales and fables. As players, they were encouraged
to learn for themselves the way myths and legends were pieced together
and it was extremely fulfilling to watch as the hack ’n’ slash barbarian
developed into a true role-playing aficionado.
Yet, as with any hand-moderated play-by-mail game, the onus was on
the skill of the referee to take the players’ wishes, mix them with ongo-
ing events and write a reply based upon the two. This process is very

Storycrafting by John Tode
referee- intensive—and usually these games are either badly run or very
short-lived. Or they go semi-professional.
That is essentially what Æs did. And since then I have been looking
for a way to turn the spotlight back onto the writer while exploiting the
elements of story and interaction that made Æs so popular.
Storycrafting is the result. It is a form of writing in which an indi-
vidual can write an ongoing novel in a milieu which they share with any
number of other participants. The participants produce a piece of crea-
tive writing and a character description, much like that in a table-top
role-playing game. Once completed, stories are submitted to a central
body. If they are published they become part of the history and reality
of the larger world. The steps of the storycrafting process are not too
different from those of any other creative writing. The five basic steps
are idea, research, composition, submission and publication. The sub-
mission stage may also involve the contributor in some rewriting to keep
their story consistent with the overall milieu. Taking a look at each of
these sections will give a much better idea as to how storycrafting works.
Idea
Let us imagine that a new participant has just joined the fantasy story
and is looking around for ideas. Their persona is a Thief called Alraeth.
Having no idea what they wish to achieve, the writer replies to a few mes-
sages in the society’s magazine and finds out that a rich widow named
Gelraem has a jewel which she uses to scry for magical objects. Alraeth
decides he wants this artefact, even if only for the money and fame it will
bring him. So the player has an idea for their first story; the stealing of
Gelraem’s jewel.
Research
As people create details of the environs, peoples, places, customs and
mythology of the game world, they are stored in an ever-expanding en-
cyclopaedia—effectively a database specifically customized for the task.
Anything written within these stories must conform with known reality.
That is to say, what one person writes must not conflict with anything
that anyone else has already created. Apart from this, people are free to
invent whatever seems appropriate and fits into the flavour and setting
of the fantasy campaign. If it does not, then the story will be rejected.
Alraeth’s player must find out what is known of this widow and her
jewel in order to make sure the story of the acquisition will be success-
ful. For a start he needs to know if anyone has ever written about where
this woman lives, what she looks like or even if anyone has tried to steal
the jewel before. He communicates with the thief who first mentioned

Overviews
the woman and finds out that the jewel is a ruby known as the Eagle’s
Eye and that Gelraem lives in Stonecutter Street. No one is sure exactly
which house so he consults the encyclopaedia on three matters; Gel-
raem, the Eagle’s Eye and Stonecutter Street.
Alraeth finds that all three references are listed in the magazine and
writes to the editor for the current information. He discovers what is
known about the widow and the thoroughfare of Stonecutter Street. The
entry dealing with the jewel only describes it as belonging to Gelraem
and purportedly having scrying abilities. With this he can now plan his
story knowing that as long as he does not write anything which conflicts
with these facts, he should have no problems.
Writers are expected to keep their creations consistent with the wide
range of folklore that Æs is based on. As far as the Eagle’s Eye is con-
cerned, any properties Alraeth invents should somehow be tied to re-
corded magical effects. He already knows that it purports to be a scrying
device, but when he writes his addition to the current entry he says that
it possesses the property of allowing the viewer to see a magical object’s
past. This ties in with the stories of crystal balls and would be acceptable
in the milieu. To make sure, however, he decides to limit the jewel’s pow-
ers so that it can only be used on the night of a full moon.
Composition
This is the actual writing of the story. Its style and content are completely
up to the individual. It can be in either the first or third person and can
be of any length. An average story would be somewhere between 2,500
and 5,000 words, but this is arbitrary. Stories must be consistent with a
persona’s abilities, equipment and experience, and must follow on from
the last chapter in the same way as any normal book. The idea of these
stories is to further a persona’s life, to create a deeper background to
their personality and traits, and to achieve goals and quests, while also
extending the information about the Æs universe. Interaction with other
personae is possible as long as the stories are properly co-ordinated.
Any references that have been used in a story are marked (usually by
bold text) and a separate entry is included. These follow the standard
layout of references in the encyclopaedia and are flagged as either a new
or updated entry. Submitted entries are then added to the database un-
der the appropriate section, and form the backbone of the reference li-
brary on the expanding universe. When there is a conflict of entries, the
one which was received first is honoured. If the writer is just mentioning
current entries in their manuscript (for example, ‘… upon returning to
the city of Kaelis …’), then they do not need to mark the reference; this
is needed only when adding to database entries (for example, ‘… upon
returning to Kaelis, the ancient city where Sir Gastian defeated Dru-

aghith the White Wyrm …’, where there are no references to Sir Gastian
or Druaghith in the index or where there are references but they do not
mention this information).
Submission
Once the synopsis, story and database entries are finished they are sub-
mitted. These are referred to collectively as a ‘manuscript’. Once submit-
ted, any manuscript will be processed and brought before a governing
body which assesses the work. There are only three judgements that can
be passed with regard to manuscripts; acceptance, acceptance with al-
teration, and rejection.
Acceptance
Accepted manuscripts are published and sent out with the next available
storycrafting magazine. Once published the work will become part of
the reality of the known world. It is always the case that a good story will
have the edge. For who could possibly turn down a fabulous work just
because the events within it are breaking tradition or setting new ground
rules? Writers are told that it is wise to remember that their success or
failure is being decided by living, breathing members of the upper ech-
elons of the Society and, short of bribery and corruption, there are many
ways to increase the chances of getting their story published!
Acceptance With Alteration

If a manuscript contains minor discrepancies it may be returned for al-
teration. Such discrepancies include, but are not limited to, misspelling
of names, references which contain internal inconsistencies and anoma-
lies with known reality (for example, writing that Kaelis is the capital of
the Northern Kingdom or that Sir Druaghith slew Gastian the White
Wyrm). Stories which are deemed to be fit for publication but are let
down by their associated entries or bad research also stand a good chance
of being returned. Alterations to be made are highlighted, though it is
up to the marker whether they explain the discrepancy further. Once a
writer has corrected the manuscript it can be resubmitted.
Rejection
If a writer’s manuscript is not returned and does not appear in the next
round of published works, then it has been rejected. Rejection does of
course bring retribution, especially if the writer has over-reached them-
self in their story. If Alraeth’s night of thievery is deemed just too auda-

Overviews
cious for such a lowly ranking Adventurer, then it may be adjudicated

that he attempts the action, is caught, and spends a day in the stocks.
Information about these sorts of happenings appears in the relevant sec-
tion of the magazine and has to become part of the writer’s next story
submission. So if Alraeth’s manuscript is rejected, he will have to begin
his next story accounting for his bungled robbery and its consequences.
You might think that, in a system in which contributors create their own
adventures, characters would succeed in whatever they try to do: this is
most definitely not the case.
Publication
The ultimate achievement of any manuscript is its publication. Once
published, every member of the Society will be able to read the submis-
sion and the fame or infamy a writer receives will be a significant boost
to their character. Fulfilment of ranks—which are based upon number of
submissions and the story’s word-count—also bring increased power to
create larger elements of the story. Of course readers will follow certain
stories over others and may even want to join in with them, but there is
also the satisfaction that at the end of thirty stories any writer will have
created a book of their persona’s adventures.
While the above examples follow the fantasy genre of storycrafting,
already there is a dark-future module just finishing a year’s testing, and
the range of possible genres covers every aspect of the local bookshelves.
How about a vampire module? Or a shared detective/thriller where sto-
ries are written from the point of view of the cop, the killer and the
nosy TV reporter simultaneously? Even at its most simple, storycrafting
is definitely an art-form to be reckoned with.
So to recap: the basics of storycrafting come down to the creation of
a manuscript which builds chapter by chapter into a complete novel.
Though a story can be planned in advance, the writer is also sharing
their milieu with several other writers—perhaps eventually several hun-
dred other writers. Each submission is paraded before a panel and if
accepted is published, which allows all the contents to become a perma-
nent part of the evolving world. Subjects referred to in the manuscript
become part of a cross-referenced database; manuscripts themselves can
be linked and will, by their nature, use ideas and characters already cre-
ated, while also adding to the world milieu. Those are the basics, but
as to the art of storycrafting itself … Now that is another, much deeper
matter!

For further details contact:

The Æs Society,
Talliston,
51 Newton Green,
Great Dunmow,
Essex CM6 1DU.
Tel: (0371) 876308.
John E. Tode is the Head of the Æs Society, a non-profit making organization

set up to advance role-playing in both live and story settings. Currently running
three distinct genres (Fantasy, Horror and Dark Future), the Society officially
launched story-crafting in the summer of 1995.

Technology
The internet and cyberspace;
interactive television; virtual
reality; are they the tools that will
enable role-playing to come of
age, or merely a set of over-hyped
gimmicks? In this special feature
we take a critical lok at the new
technologies that, according to
some, are revolutionizing the fiels
of interactive fiction. We examine
what is being done with them right
now, and speculate about what
might be achieved in the future.
Virtual Reality: the
future of role-playing
games?
Kay Dekker and Michael Tovey examine
some common misconceptions about Virtual
Reality and consider its future as a tool for
creating role-playing environments
So what is this Virtual Reality thing? Don’t believe what you read in the
papers, even the trendoid papers like Wired, Mondo 2000, and (shud-
der) Omni. Also, please try to forget Lawnmower Man. VR is not like sex,
it’s not like drugs, and no, there aren’t any ‘games’ on our ProVision
equipment.That’s got the three most common questions we get from
the mundanes out of the way. So, what is VR? Well, as we understand the
term, it’s a set of techniques, nearly always using computers, to allow the
presentation to the senses (usually only the visual sense, but occasionally
touch and hearing as well) of things that aren’t there. No, we told you
that it wasn’t like drugs—aren’t you listening? The difference between
drugs and VR is that VR costs a whole lot more and isn’t as realistic. OK?
What VR is
Basically, it works like this. You have a model of the world, with models
of all the objects you’re interested in, all in the right places, kept in the
computer. You have a glove, or a 3D mouse, or a latex body-suit—what-
ever—that allows the computer to keep track of where you are and what

Virtual Reality by Kay Dekker and Michael Tovey
your body’s doing. Given that information, the computer works out what
you’d see, hear and touch, as a result of where you are and what you’re
doing, and sends the relevant sensory stuff to your body via appropriate
output devices. So you see, hear and touch these virtual objects in the
virtual world just as you would if they were really there. At least, that’s
what the hypers and the hopers would like you to believe.
Is it Real?
A lot of the present-day systems and games that claim to be ‘virtual re-
ality’ are nothing of the kind. If you look at the term, you’ll notice it
includes the word ‘reality’. If the world you live in is made of unshaded
polygons in bright colours, jerky movement, no textures and you have a
gun in your hand, then you might be happy with the state of the art in
game-based VR.
A true virtual reality doesn’t have to be identical to the real thing—
what would be the point?—but you should be able to interact with it as
though it were real: rich in detail, meaningful and, above all, credible.
Graphics should be crisp and clear; movement should be smooth; re-
sponse times should be immediate. Can you speak to other characters
and see their lips move when—if—they answer? Can you pick up and
manipulate any object you see? Can you survive more than three min-
utes without getting shot or your money running out? If not, that’s not
VR; it’s unrealistic: a partial environment. So is Sonic the Hedgehog, and
there isn’t much opportunity for role-play in that either.
Given this, the idea that VR is an ideal medium for the presentation
of the ‘other realities’ that we conjure with when we role-play seems at-
tractive. However, we do not believe that it is.
The RPG Background

In general, role-playing games are a social, as well as a sociable, activ-
ity. Apart from the anomalous case of solo gamebooks (and, of course,
their computer-mediated analogues, the ‘adventure games’, of which
Crowther and Woods’ Colossal Cave was the progenitor), role-playing re-
quires the active participation of at least two people: a ‘mediator’ (GM,
DM, StoryGuide, or whatever) and one ‘agent’ (player). The task of the
mediator is to present the world and its interactions with the agent in
response to the agent’s actions. Solo books and adventure games have
printed matter and computation in the place of the mediator. No mat-
ter that more modern computer-based adventure games are capable of
presenting a world through images and sounds as well as through text;
essentially they represent the interaction of a player with a static, pre-
generated, absolute construction.

Technology
Current Computer Mediation in Games

Perhaps the most common computer-mediated analogue of role-playing
games is found in the so-called MUDs, or Multi-User Dungeons, many
of which may be found on the Internet and on various bulletin-boards.
Here, agents manufacture personae who interact in a given (usually
themed) world, the consistency of which is maintained by a computer
program. There is usually no human mediation, except that which is
provided by the agents themselves: in essence, they co-mediate the tell-
ing of stories involving their characters, using the computer-mediated
material to provide constancies that would be laborious to maintain,
such as the connectivity of rooms, or the placement of objects. To en-
capsulate: the computer mediates the stage setting and the mechanics
of the production, and the players mutually invent their agents’ stories.
The reason why we consider MUDs (or TVRs—Textual Virtual Reali-
ties, as we VR folk style them) to be closest to RPGs is that they preserve
to a great extent the quality of ‘narrative-centred interaction’—their
primary concentration is on the making and telling of stories. There’s
been enough written about the primacy of narrative in role-playing in
journals such as Aslan, Imazine and so on that we won’t dwell on it here.
Technical Problems
The cost of using VR is prohibitive. A minimal configuration for an im-
mersive system (one user, basic helmet and mouse, no hardware textur-
ing, no sound, no tactility) will cost the best part of £50,000—and that’s
just for the visualization component. Any ancillary components, such as
a solid modeller for building the environments, agent software for any
autonomous agents within the system, and the scripting software will
push the price well towards the hundred thousand pound mark.
No matter what you think of the costs of commercial game systems,
no small shelf of game books and dice will even begin to approach those
prices. Is the privilege of being trendy with technology worth that price
to you? We think not. Costs will not fall for a usable system to the point
where Jo Average Gamer can afford it for decades yet.
The above system only handles one player. Effectively it gives all the
shared experience of a solo gamebook. The largest current shared-re-
ality system is owned by Matsushita, costs about ten times that of the
basic system, and will let three—yes, three—people interact in the same
world. Remember that a GM may wish to maintain a direct presence in
the world: for example, taking the role of an NPC. So that system could
handle a gaming group of two players. Not too hot if you need a fighter,
a cleric, a magic user, a thief, and everyone else along. We won’t go into
the technicalities, but adding an extra person to a system costs much
more than the cost of a one-person system.

Virtual Reality by Kay Dekker and Michael Tovey
VR equipment is unpleasant to wear. The resolution of even the best

headsets is so poor that a wearer is rendered legally blind, by UK law; the
techniques used force the wearer to focus their vision a couple of inches
in front of their eyes, even though their brain believes that the eyes are
focusing in the distance, leading to (usually transient) loss of accommo-
dation in the eyes. The headsets are heavy, sweaty, and generally clumsy
to wear, being tethered to the processor box with thick cables. Similar
difficulties occur with the gloves or 3D mice used for manipulating the
virtual world. Getting tangled up in your cabling while not able to see it
is an unpleasant experience. The sheer effort of building a virtual
world that is suitable for playing in is prohibitive. If you ever thought
that drawing detailed maps was a chore, you should try building a 3D
model of the area. Most modelling software is big, clunky, expensive,
and irritating to use. Building a virtual world is like kicking a dead whale
down a beach, only much less enjoyable.
Human Mediation vs Computer Mediation

The notion that VR, because it is computer-based, can dispense with
human mediation is absurd. The construction of narrative requires a
fine responsiveness in all participants, and not least in the GM. No such
flexibility of response is available in computer-based systems. Appar-
ent insight and creativity has advanced very little since Joseph Weizen-
baum’s ‘Eliza’ program, which models the extremely limited domain of
Rogerian non-directive counselling. Some systems have been developed
which, given a plot, can elaborate a story around it, but these stories are
barely interesting enough to involve a small child. Even the poorest hu-
man mediator can do better at no cost, and much faster, and in response
to the dramatic intentions of a considerable number of people.
Interacting with the Virtual World

The ways of interacting with a virtual world are few. You can wave at
things, making gestures that the system occasionally interprets correctly,
or you can use a point-and-click approach. Speech input hardly works
well in a gaming environment, and the massive problems of making
tactility and striction (gentle touch and movement prevention, respec-
tively) usable at all, even in a research lab, make the idea of really natural
interaction with the virtual world nigh-on impossible.
Conclusion
Forget VR—at least for a decade or two. Or ten. We use VR at the mo-
ment, not because it’s wonderful, but because it’s the only way we have

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of doing the work our research is focused on. Gamers have the benefit of
mature technology: the written and spoken word and the human imagi-
nation. For narrative purposes, these truly cannot be surpassed.
Kay Dekker and Michael Tovey have been been using virtual reality in their
research at Coventry University for over two years, mostly for the full-size visuali-
zation of vehicle concept designs. They use a ProVision PV100/VRX from DIVI-
SION for their immersive work, and an in-house system using CrystalEyes shut-
ter-glasses and a Silicon Graphics Indigo2/Extreme for the 3D non-immersive
work. One of them has been gaming for about fifteen years.

Cyberspace
Performances
Is cyberspace a mask to hide behind—or a
place in which we can appear as we really
are? Kurt Lancaster explores the ways in
which human behaviour is interfaced and
displayed in the digital age.
Cyberspace’s inherent immateriality and malleability of content provides

the most tempting stage for the acting out of mythic realities; realities once
‘confined’ to … ritual, to theatre, painting, books … Cyberspace can be
seen as an extension … of our age-old capacity and need to dwell in fic-
tion, to dwell empowered or enlightened on other, mythic planes, if only
periodically, as well as this earthly one (Benedikt, 1991.)
The performer scrubs the side of a curved wall. His arm is tattooed and
his head is bald. Looking like a neo-nazi punk, he stares back at you
from the computer screen. ‘Hey, can I talk to you?’ he smirks, his expres-
sion as real as any seen on television or a movie. The computer flashes
up a small box on the screen and gives you three options on how to re-
spond to his overture. If you respond correctly, he launches into a tirade,
warning you that you should not trust the United Nations command at
this base. The plot unfolds as you walk around the corridors and rooms
of the base and interact with other digitized performers. You begin to
unearth a conspiracy that could result in one civilization being destroyed
for the benefit of another. While this is happening, you are also expe-
riencing flashbacks about your girlfriend who was involved in a serious
accident, and your mother who yells at you for leaving medical school
and joining the military. These are scenes from the interactive movie

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Quantum Gate, contained on a CD-ROM and displayed on a computer

screen (see Roach, 1993).
Quantum Gate is just one example of the many performances that can
occur in the realm of cyberspace—that location, according to Thomas
Furness, a virtual reality pioneer, where people ‘come together in a vir-
tual place, like a real place, only it doesn’t exist anywhere’ (Miller,1992),
and where they share what cyberpunk author William Gibson describes
as ‘a consensual hallucination’ (cited in Cartwright, 1994). Sometimes
the performance is ‘one-way’ as in the case of interactive movies and
games: the audience-performer reacts to pre-recorded digitized actors
as the virtual world unfolds visually and aurally before them. Sometimes
the performer can textually respond to and interact with other real users
live on a computer network. Alternatively, people can now be totally ‘im-
mersed’ into a digital environment by wearing virtual-reality equipment,
which allows users to see, hear and feel a virtual world. In each case the
virtual worlds are located within cyberspace, the digital architecture of
a computer.
What is ‘Performance’?
But are these different computer activities performances? Are users per-
forming? ‘Performance’ is displayed behaviour, whether you are playing
a character who talks to and reacts to pre-recorded digitized actors, hav-
ing a cyberspace ‘date’, or becoming immersed into a digital, virtual-
reality world. Performance scholar Richard Schechner theorizes that a
performer:
performs in the field between a negative and a double negative, a
field of limitless potential, free from both the person (not) and the per-
son impersonated (not not). All effective performances share this ‘not-
not not’ quality: Olivier is not Hamlet, but also he is not not Hamlet:
his performance is between a denial of being another (=I am me) and a
denial of not being another (=I am Hamlet).
Cyberspace users are unlikely to be performing the same types of
character that an actor like Olivier rehearses and then displays on a
stage. On the other hand they do share that performance quality: they
are ‘not’ a real- world individual and ‘not-not’ a cyberspace identity. For
example, I, as a user interfaced into cyberspace, am not really me, for
I am that virtual identity located in the cyberspace world of the com-
puter. I am also not-not that virtual identity, because some aspect of me
is there, even though I am not physically present. A virtual image is
defined as a ‘type of image that you see from a particular location in
space even though there is no object in that location’ (Miller, 1992). The
user is a liminal agent in a state of flux between the virtual and the real.
Benedikt puts it this way:

Cyberspace Performance by Kurt Lancaster
Egos and multiple egos, roles and functions, have a new existence in
cyberspace. Here no individual is appreciated by virtue only, if at all, of
their physical appearance, location, or circumstances. New, liquid, and
multiple associations between people are possible … and new modes
and levels of truly interpersonal communication come into being.
In cyberspace, people identify and communicate with one another
without the physical associations commonly used in the physical world.
Because of this virtual identity, cyberspace users are often able to dis-
play types of behaviour that would only rarely come into play in the real
world.
The Computer as a Mask

A performer may use a mask at a carnival or in a theatre as a licence
to get away with different types of behaviours. In an analogous way
the computer can become a mask that disguises the conventional self
and liberates the true personality (Caillois, 1979). In other words, even
though the cyberspace identity is ‘me’ interfaced, I may be:
Behaving ‘as if I am someone else’ or ‘as if I am “beside myself ” ’, or
‘not myself ’, as when in a trance. But this ‘someone else’ may also be ‘me
in another state of feeling/being’, as if there were multiple ‘me’s in each
person. The difference between performing myself … and more formal
presentations of self … is a difference of degree, not kind (Schechner,
1985).
This is the essence of the performance nature of cyberspace. Users,
like traditional performers, have the ability to be someone else, but they
are not someone else—they are themselves performing behaviours that
they would, perhaps, not display if they were not-not that someone else
of the virtual world.
The potential of a traditional stage performer to liberate their true
personality/identity through the playing of a character—the use of a
‘mask’—is clearly seen in the following description of an actor perform-
ing a role near the end of the nineteenth century:
Under the strong impulse of a desire to perform his part, a noted
actor was accustomed night after night to go upon the stage and sustain
his appointed task, walking about as actively as the youngest member
of the company. This old man was so lame that he hobbled every day to
the theatre, and sat aching in his chair till his cue was spoken—a signal
which made him as oblivious of physical infirmity as if he had inhaled
chloroform, though he was in the full possession of his … senses. (Eddy,
1906)
If a traditional performer has the potential to be ‘transformed, ena-
bled to do things “in performance” he cannot do ordinarily’ (Schechner,
1985), then surely on the digital stage of cyberspace, users have a great

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potential to experience new kinds of behaviours and identities. For ex-

ample, Matthew Deets, who is visually impaired, describes how, when he
talks to people in ‘real’ life, the concrete, material world, ‘a veil of intimi-
dation or discomfort descends on the conversation’. In the cyberspace
community of computer text-based communications, he says, ‘I don’t
even have to mention it’ (Shaw, 1993). Other users can only see Deets
transformed as a text image: they cannot see, hear, smell or touch his
physical presence. They can only interact with his virtual, text self.
This is the mask that creates the character that Roger Caillois be-
lieves liberates true personality.
For the virtual world of cyberspace lets us dream that we can build an
inner frontier, a virtual reality, to our specs. So our culture is telling itself
sexy, glitzy, wishful stories about discovering alien territories right here
on Earth. About releasing ourselves from the burden of body and liber-
ating ourselves from sex and race and class. About acting out our fan-
tasies in an electronic nether world and tripping through that trapdoor
in the mind that will let us, like Alice, fall into a dream (Porush, 1993:4).
Currently this ‘fantasy’ of the electronic nether world which frees us-
ers from inhibitions is most clearly seen in the conversations occurring
in the on-line computer conferences. For example, in 1991 a class at
McGill University, Montreal, Canada, explored cyberspace in education.
As part of the course, students participated in on-line cyberspace discus-
sions, where communication was text-based. However, the nature of the
discussions involved with the on-line virtual classroom differed so much
from the physical, face-to-face discussions in the real classroom, that:
To a casual observer, the on-line discussions would appear to involve
a different group of people than those in the class. To the informed
observer, however, the communication concerned a somewhat different
aspect of existence—a kind of parallel life (Cartwright, 1994:24).
The students, while in cyberspace, were transformed into new kinds
of identities.
The Case of ‘Julie’

In a more extreme case dating back to 1985, someone named Julie
logged on to the Internet. She described herself as an older woman, so
severely disabled that she had to push the keys of the computer keyboard
with a headstick. She made many female friends who shared their prob-
lems with her, and Julie would send advice back to them. This advice
helped change some of the users’ lives. However:
‘Julie’ did not exist. ‘She’ was, it turned out, a middle-aged male
psychiatrist. Logging onto the conference for the first time, this man
had accidentally begun a discussion with a woman who had mistaken
him for another woman. ‘I was stunned,’ he said later, ‘at the conversa-

tional mode. I hadn’t known that women talked among themselves that
way. There was so much more vulnerability, so much more depth and
complexity. Men’s conversations on the nets were much more guarded
and superficial, even among intimates. It was fascinating, and I wanted
more.’ He spent weeks developing the right persona. A totally disabled,
single older woman was perfect. He felt that such a person wouldn’t be
expected to have a social life. Consequently her existence only as a net
persona would seem natural. It worked for years, until one of Julie’s
devoted admirers, bent on finally meeting her in person, tracked her
down (Stone, 1991.)
Not only did the computer mask ‘Julie’s’ real-life identity, it allowed
‘her’ to communicate with and help people that ‘she’ might never have
met in the physical world. The psychiatrist wanted more open and vul-
nerable discussions that he was not getting with other users, so his virtual
identity was a masked character that gave him the freedom to reach a
new level of communication, fooling everyone on the net. As Schechner
would put it, the psychiatrist was not Julie, yet he was not-not Julie. Was
‘Julie’ this psychiatrist’s ‘true personality’, as Caillois would say? The dis-
guise certainly did allow him to help other people, for he did give advice
that did help change people’s lives, so, in a way, Julie was a psychiatrist.
Meeting the Vice-President

Cyberspace is a ‘place of experimentation and exploration’ (Cartwright,
1994). U.S. Vice President Al Gore experimented and explored cyber-
space through on-line text when he logged onto a computer conference
using the CompuServe Information Service on January 13, 1994. The
event was hosted by U.S. News & World Report and televised on C-SPAN,
and it was the first time an official from the White House had ever par-
ticipated in a public on-line forum. Some of the users, hidden behind
the mask of the computer, were free to make such politically aggressive
comments as: ‘CONSERVATIVES RULE!!!’ and ‘Bob Dole is awesome!!’
(Belsie, 1994). Republican statements of this sort, directed at a Democrat
Vice President would probably not have been made if those same people
had been physically in the same room with Gore. Within the world of
cyberspace there is no hierarchy and virtual text-constructed ‘rooms’ be-
come places where people can vent political frustrations, or where those
with similar tastes can talk with each other about different ideas. Here’s
an example from an on-line cyberspace conversation, which took place
in the ‘room’ Romance Connection on America Online:
RichC34: hello all

Tinkerbell: 22/ a female fairy!
MeropeLady::::watchin the RC spin around me:::
Cpt Rick: Hello Everyone! :)

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DzDevil: @}——}——}———}————— for you Tink :-)

MATTPEP: crky - rc? what do you mean?
MeropeLady: Howdee Cpt Rick!!!!
Tinkerbell:{{{{{{{{{{DZ!!!}}}}}}}}}}}
Tinkerbell: Thank you DZ how sweet of you!
RichC34: where r u from tink
JohnR20710: One 20 year-old god for a 22 year old fairy.
DzDevil: @}——}——}———}——— for Merope becaws you are
sosweet!!!!!!!
MeropeLady: How ya been Bratty Tink?
MeropeLady: Awww..thanks Dz....::::tryin to focus on Rose::::
RichC34: {S Meow
Tinkerbell: Been better! I have a pounding headache. How are you and
work?
Cyberspace conversation in this sort of room is characterized by non-

linear, multiple, parallel conversations, as well as by the imaginative use
of graphical character symbols to help support the text. For example, in
the fifth line DzDevil gives Tinkerbell a graphical rose, but since there
are so many people talking at once, her response—‘Thank you DZ how
sweet of you!’—doesn’t appear until four lines later. Also, she has to re-
spond to multiple conversations about her simultaneously, such as when
JohnR20710 makes a pass at her (which she ignores), but responds to
MeropeLady in the last line of the text.
Non-Linear Thought?
This ability to follow non-linear structures reflects a new way to process
information. Gregory Ulmer theorizes that people used to watching the
non-linear flow structure of MTV and the medium’s ‘ability to simul-
taneously present several different stories’ are teaching people a new
form of literacy that breaks the ‘barriers of linear thinking—the logic
of the written word in which one idea leads to the next’ (Wheat, 1994).
In fact another professor, Roger Drury, thinks that students exposed to
this kind of non-linear structure were better able to comprehend the
‘abrupt shifts’ and ‘juxtapositions’ of T. S. Eliot’s poem ‘The Wasteland’.
Many readers from a generation earlier (who were not used to non-line-
ar thinking) find the poem ‘impenetrable’ (Wheat, 1994). The structures
of cyberspace do reflect the non-linear pattern of MTV and also encour-
age people to adopt shifting, parallel thinking structures. Whether this
mode of expression causes people to learn in new ways remains to be
seen.
In addition to cyberspace flirting, people can enter cyberspace
rooms that become fictitious stages for people to actually play charac-
ters in fictional world settings. On America Online people can ‘sim’—

play a text-based virtual simulation of a character they create in a Star

Trek world. These performance events are called MUDs, or ‘Multi-User
Dimensions’—a form of social computer gaming which ‘resemble a par-
allel life, often with a completely different set of physical, social, and
emotional attributes’ (Cartwright, 1994).
This kind of parallel cyberspace life was explored in Lucasfilm’s on-
line game Habitat. Using a low-resolution graphical user interface (in-
stead of text only), users could play games, go on adventures, fall in love,
get married, get divorced, start businesses, found religions, wage wars,
protest against them and experiment with self-government through this
simulated, virtual world. Within the ‘fictional’ community of Habitat, the
users had to decide what kind of society they wanted to make. For exam-
ple, users debated whether or not murder should be considered a crime
in Habitat. About half felt that within this virtual world it was part of the
fun, while the other half felt murder should not be allowed. Shortly after
this debate, one user’s character went out and shot some of the other us-
ers’ virtual characters. One of the other users (a Greek Orthodox priest
in the real world) opened a church within the community, and members
of this church were not allowed to carry weapons or use violence. The
church became a popular part of the community. Later, a sheriff was
elected to help enforce laws (see Morningstar and Farmer, 1991).
Some of the participants of the virtual world of the Habitat commu-
nity seem to have used their philosophy and values of the real world to
help order the virtual community, while others welcomed the ability to
create anarchy. Victor Turner, the late anthropologist and performance
scholar, made an observation that seems to fit here:
When we act on the stage, whatever our stage may be, we must now …
bring into the symbolic or fictitious world the urgent problems of our
reality … And when we enter whatever theatre our lives allow us, we
have already learned how strange and many-layered everyday life is, how
extraordinary the ordinary.
Whether users are playing fictitious characters or some aspect of them-

selves, they are displaying human behaviours, wishes and desires in a vir-
tual world that allows them to explore their own nature and behaviours
without, in most cases, a real-world consequence.
Interactive Movies and Beyond

So far we have primarily discussed text-based cyberspace worlds. How-
ever, the next generation of cyberspace performances will make use of
realistic worlds, in which users can see and hear the environment all
around them. Although the examples currently available in the com-
mercial market do not allow a shared virtual experience where you can

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see, hear, talk to or touch a real-looking virtual person in virtual rooms

like those found on America Online, it is likely that technology which
makes this possible will be available in the near future.
In the interactive movie Quantum Gate the user plays the character
of Drew Griffin, who is never seen on the computer screen. You see the
virtual world through his eyes and you meet with other performers (digi-
tized actors) and talk with them. The director, Greg Roach, employs over
thirty actors to perform the characters in his movie: they perform in a
studio in front of a blue screen and are later digitized into the computer-
designed setting. The audience is the participant in front of the com-
puter who ‘performs’ the lead character, Drew. A linear plot unfolds and
there is only one resolution to the story no matter what you choose to
say to the other performers. However Roach has designed the sequel so
that:
Whole sections drop out depending on choices viewers make … If

you drive the character to a psychotic state, the sound track becomes
psychotic to reflect that … There are literally dozens of different endings
(Trumbull, 1994).
The user experiences the virtual world visually and aurally. It certainly
does not have the spontaneity and feel of a live on-line forum, where a
user can literally say anything and try to do anything textually, but the
interactive movie does explore the nature of pre-recorded interactivity,
and it does allow users to explore, in some ways, how they can relate to
the other characters encountered in the story.
In the game Myst, a CD-ROM ‘block-buster’, the user plays a neu-
tral, generic character, an explorer who needs to solve the mystery of
an alternate world. For most of the game the user does not interact with
other characters and is not forced into a linear plot. They only need
to solve the mystery by finding clues and putting them together. What
is noteworthy about Myst is its eerie environmental ambience: its care-
fully structured back-story, its 2,500 impressively detailed images, and its
digitized sound. All of these elements combine to create a virtual world
that is so realistic-looking that users wish they could step into it
Virtual Reality
If totally immersive virtual realities become available, then users will be
able to do just that: ‘step into’ virtual worlds where they can see, hear
and touch the cyberspace world and the virtual images of other users.
Instead of using screens and keyboards, people can put displays over
their eyes, gloves on their hands, and headphones on their ears. A com-
puter controls what they sense; and they, in turn, can control the com-
puter (Aukstakalnis and Blatner, 1992)

Through these different devices, the user is surrounded by a three-

dimensional, digital environment. The systems we have previously con-
sidered involved a user who interacted with a ‘world’ that was projected
on a screen they looked at from the outside. With the head-mounted dis-
play, the user experiences the illusion of looking at a virtual world from
within. A special glove simulates the sense of touch. One design uses air
bladders within the glove. When a virtual image is touched, air is com-
pressed and released in certain parts of the glove, controlled by com-
puter commands, giving the sensation of tactile pressure on the hands.
One of the earliest ‘virtual reality’ prototype machines was called the
‘Sensorama Simulator’, entered into the United States Patent Office in,
1962 by Morton Heilig. Looking like a ‘vintage pinball machine’, the
prototype allowed the user to ‘ride’ on a motorcycle through the streets
of Brooklyn. He could hear the motorcycle start, feel the vibration of it
through the handlebars and see the three-dimensional view throughout
most of the user’s field of vision. The concept never got off the ground
(see Rheingold, 1991). It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that virtual real-
ity began to gel—when the right combination of sponsors, visionaries,
engineers and enabling technologies came together at NASA’s Ames
Research Centre. It was there that a generation of cybernauts donned
a helmet-mounted display and glove input device, pointed their fingers
and flew around wire-frame worlds of green light-mesh. Now, a user can
go to such a place as Incredible Universe, and pay five dollars to wear
virtual-reality equipment that takes them into another world.
An observer watching a virtual-reality user from outside the perfor-
mance frame can see them expressing physical behaviours that can only
be understood from within it. The user is physically in two worlds at the
same time. Furness says that:
Virtual reality is an environment that you create using a combination
of visual, auditory, and tactile images so that it becomes an alternative,
sort of an artificial environment or reality. We call it a ‘reality’ because
you perceive it as if it is a world. It’s just like you’re walking into another
world, and you’re perceiving it as if it becomes reality itself (Miller, 1992).
Cyber-performances tend to reflect what Turner commented about
Jerzy Grotowski’s purpose of his experimental theatre:
Let us create a liminal space-time ‘pod’ or pilgrimage centre …
where human beings may be disciplined and discipline themselves to
strip off false personae stifling the individual within.
Online text-based discussions, cybernetic helmets and gloves and
the CD-ROM interactive movies all provide the discipline to create new
modes of cultural performances, performances that will shape how indi-
viduals communicate, argue, make love, politics, entertainments, friend-
ships or enemies, and invent new fictional worlds or remake the ‘real’
one. The computer will not only become a pilgrimage centre for users

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to find themselves, but ideally it will be where they will find others im-
mersed in a new kind of community having no national borders, physi-
cal prejudices, ethnic cleansings, or refugees.
Pioneers on the Electronic Frontier

At present, we are at the pioneer stage of performances on the electronic
frontier. As the technology advances so will the physical realism of cy-
berspace. Most likely these cyberspace worlds won’t be the nightmare
worlds of Gibson’s cyberpunk visions, nor will they be placid worlds of
tranquillity. Rather, cyberspace will reflect the hopes, dreams, aspira-
tions and fears of our own thinking, for, in essence:
mortal mind perpetuates its own thought … A mill at work or the

action of a water-wheel is but a derivative from, and continuation of, the
primitive mortal mind (Eddy, 1906).
If mankind’s evolving thought brought about the water-wheels and mills

of the industrial revolution and thus the beginnings of the modern age,
then what is mankind developing into at the end of the twentieth cen-
tury? In the final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Q, repre-
sentative of a superior alien species, tells Captain Picard that humanity’s
future quests won’t be found through mapping star systems or exploring
nebula, but by exploring the unlimited possibilities of being. Cyberspace
may reflect mankind’s natural (and technological) evolution towards a
new state or kind of being and, in fact, the performances we are seeing
today on the electronic frontier may be the genesis of a new kind of hu-
man being, a person whose primary future and identity lies in the realm
of cyberspace.
Bibliography
Aukstakalnis, Steve and David Blatner; ‘Silicon Mirage’ in The Art and
Science of Virtual Reality, ed. Stephen F. Roth; Berkeley, Peachpit Press,
1992.
Belsie, Laurent; ‘Our Correspondent Meets the Vice President in Cyber-
space’ in The Christian Science Monitor, January, 19, 1994.
Benedikt, Michael; ‘Introduction’, Cyberspace: First Steps, ed. Michael
Benedikt, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1991.
‘Cyberspace: Some Proposals’ in Cyberspace: First Steps, ed. Michael Ben-
edikt, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1991.
Caillois, Roger; Man, Play, and Games, New York, Shocken Books, 1979.

Carroll, Jon; ‘Guerrillas in the Myst’, Wired August, 1994.

Cartwright, Glenn F; ‘Virtual or Real? The Mind in Cyberspace’, The
Futurist, March-April, 1994.
Eddy, Mary Baker; Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Boston,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1906.
Miller, Carman; ‘Online interviews Dr. Thomas A. Furness III, Virtual
Reality Pioneer’, Online November, 1992.
Morningstar, Chip and F. Randall Farmer;‘The Lessons of Lucasfilm’s
Habitat’, Cyberspace: First Steps, ed. Michael Benedikt, Cambridge: MIT
Press, 1991.
Porush, David;‘Cyberspace: Portal to Transcendence?’, OMNI April,
1993.
Rheingold, Howard; Virtual Reality, New York, Summit Books, 1991.
Roach, Greg; Quantum Gate, Fremont, Media Vision; Hyperbole Studios,
1993.
Schechner, Richard; Between Theatre & Anthropology, Philadelphia, Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania Press, 1985.
Shaw, Brenda; ‘Plugging into the Net’, The Oregonian, December 6, 1993.
Stone, Allucquere Rosanne; ‘Will the Real Body Please Stand Up?:
Boundary Stories about Virtual Cultures’ in Cyberspace: First Steps, ed. Mi-
chael Benedikt, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1991.
Trumbull, Mark; ‘The Viewer is in the Driver’s Seat In This Movie for
the 21st Century.’
Turner, Victor; From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play, New
York, Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982.
Wheat, Jack; ‘MTV: a totally new form of literacy?’, The Oregonian, Sep-
tember 18, 1994.
Kurt Lancaster received his M.A. degree in Theatre from the University of Maine,
where he applied his love of role-playing games in writing his thesis in 1991.
Currently he is working towards his Ph.D. in Performance Studies at New York
University.

Literary Roleplay in
Cyberspace
Multi-user dungeons are giving birth to a
sophisticated new form of role-playing, where
expressive language counts for more than
combat skill. Phil Goetz explores the world of
cyberspace werewolves
Back in Inter*action #1, I wrote what I thought was a comprehensive

article on interactive fiction and computers. Although I touched on the
subject of MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) in my article, I implied that
they were little more than multi-player versions of Zork.
So imagine my confusion when I logged into GarouMUSH for the
first time. The game really has only two verbs: ‘look’ and ‘pose’. No ‘at-
tack’, ‘climb’, ‘drink’, ‘open’, ‘swim’ or any of the other commands that
one gets used to on more conventional text adventure games. In a con-
ventional MUD, if you wanted to drink the water in Half Moon Pool,
you would type:
drink pool
On GarouMUSH you would be more likely to type:
pose kneels on the mossy banks of the pool, scoops some of the cold
water into his hands, and drinks.
If you are the only character at the pool, you’d feel pretty stupid ‘pos-
ing’ this to yourself. Like most MUSHes it is a social environment where
people gather and talk. But unlike many MUSHes, it is much more than
a chat line.

Literary Roleplay in Cyberspace by Phil Goetz
What Makes the Difference

If you log into GarouMUSH, you will find distinct characters, moving
about between the city and the forest purposefully: talking over recent
events in St Claire or at the Caern, making friends and enemies, and
living their lives. On most MUCKs, MUSHes, and MOOs—even ones
such as LambdaMOO and FurryMUCK where people take the trouble
to describe their characters and their homes—you find people dropping
in and out of character, sometimes making virtual plays at each other
but basically just chatting. What makes the difference? I believe there are
several reasons for GarouMUSH’s success.
1: The simplest and most important new idea in GarouMUSH is that it

distinguishes between IC (in character) and OOC (out of character) play.
If you, the player, want to speak to another player, you use the command
‘page’:
page Anpwhotep=Will you be on tomorrow night?
which sends a private message to Anpwhotep:
Blinks-at-Fire pages: Will you be on tomorrow night?
The ‘pose’ or ‘say’ commands, on the other hand, print a message to

everyone present, attributing the statement to your character. Even if
you want to speak to all the players, you still use the ‘page’ command,
because GarouMUSH players are used to associating messages pro-
duced by ‘page’ with OOC information. (This means that you can play a
deathly serious scene IC while cracking jokes about it OOC.) The word
‘pages’ in the message implies that the sender is using a computer in-
terface, which reminds the recipients that it’s the player talking, not the
character. There is also an OOC ‘room’ where you can go if you just want
to chat with other players. Otherwise, you are assumed to be IC.
Player characters are not allowed to make use of information gained
OOC. If your character doesn’t understand English, you may not re-
spond to things said in English. If you check players’ locations and see
that a friend is alone in the Umbra with two dangerous Black Spiral
Dancers, you may not rush to help without an IC excuse for wandering
through that part of the world. And when it’s time to go, you don’t just
disappear as if Scotty had beamed you up; you make some IC excuse for
leaving or going to sleep.
2: The MUSH is set in a very well developed game-world, closely based

on White Wolf ’s game Werewolf: The Apocalypse and set in the fictional
city of St Claire which has been carefully planned by the creators of the

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MUSH. The werewolves, or Garou, have a cosmology; they have hierar-

chies at the levels of the tribe, the sept (like a town), and the pack; a sys-
tem of challenges describing how these hierarchies change, and a law to
govern themselves. Each of the fourteen Garou tribes have stereotypical
attitudes and modes of behaviour. GarouMUSH de-emphasises game
mechanics, but if you need them, the Werewolf manual has guidelines for
dealing with everything from being trapped underwater to jumping off
a cliff.
3: Before a new player joins the game, their character has to be ap-
proved by the ‘wizzes’—the people who administer the game. This helps
at least three ways. First, it defuses arguments (‘A wolf can’t be a explo-
sives expert!’). Wiz approval gives characters a stamp of authority; pre-
sumably, if a character did not make sense or was too powerful, no wiz
would approve it. The balance of power between characters is especially
important in MUSHes, where most role-play is spontaneous, because
your adversary is more likely to be another player than an NPC gauged
to your level. Second, it keeps the cast of characters balanced (Garou-
MUSH gets a disproportionate number of applicants wanting to play
angst-ridden adolescent characters!) and prevents new characters from
interfering with major plotlines. Third, it keeps the ‘wrong element’ out.
People who aren’t willing to take the time to write up a good character,
who are mainly interested in killing, or who don’t write well, would clut-
ter up the MUSH.
A central gathering place is crucial to a MUSH. Spontaneous role-
playing is much more likely when you have a reasonably large number
of characters in one place. On GarouMUSH, the Caern is the centre of
Garou life. It is a large, circular grassy area consisting of nine locations,
from any one of which you can see what people are doing in the others.
It’s better than a park or bar, because people can meet there any time of
day or night, and because there aren’t as many restrictions on accepted
behaviour and topics of conversations in a caern.
Three elements, specific to Werewolf, strike me as the key to the game’s
success. First, the characters have a common cause (to defend Gaia and
fight the Wyrm) which unites them all in some way. Second, they can
barely stand each other. As in any religion, different sects disagree on
their purpose and methods. Thirdly, there is a constant undercurrent of
violence and anger running through the Garou community. The strict
dominance hierarchy and the Old West-style respect for violence as final
arbiter creates constant tension. On one hand, this causes frustration
and anger, and tempts the players to create combat monsters. On the
other, it encourages people to stay in-character, and it’s a great source
of stories. If you can’t resist making a joke at the expense of the wrong
person, you will pay the price.

The creators of GarouMUSH went further to create the kind of role-

playing environment they wanted. They recruited a core group of about
thirty players, by invitation, and took a few months of practice role-play
to iron out difficulties before opening it to the public. The theory was
that, before letting in J. Random User, the MUSH would already have a
role-playing standard with momentum behind it. Players who didn’t like
that kind of role-playing would leave through social pressure before they
could form a stable clique. Newcomers who liked what they saw could
take the core players as role models, and eventually become high-calibre
players themselves.
MUSHing Along With Your Faceless Friends

Given these factors, some good players, and luck, you can find reward-
ing role-playing in a MUSH. But you aren’t merely playing a tabletop
game via e-mail or IRC (inter-relay chat). The resulting style of play is
quite different from an ordinary role-playing session—even if you ran
that session without dice and communicated only via written notes.
The first difference is that, most of the time, no one is in charge.
It is up to players to find something to do. What they find usually isn’t
a heroic quest, but character interaction—visit someone’s pups, ask if
they think the rumours about the pack-leader are true, teach a wolf-
born werewolf how to use a telephone. It may take characters longer to
show their true colours, but they end up more fully developed. Alex of
GarouMUSH says, ‘This place is fun because you can play your character
in more depth. Everyday stuff. Real life games are more involved with
major highlights of a character’s life. Not the average days.’
Because there is no referee, the purpose of players changes. Instead
of taking what the referee gives them and choosing an optimal response,
they see themselves as co-authors, with a more global concern not just
for their character, but for the entire story.
Perhaps the most important difference is the strange social environ-
ment. The oddities of MUSH out-of character social life would fill an
entire article, but here is the central point: you never see the faces of
the people you talk to. This can be an advantage. Therru says, ‘I am
much more free to become my character. No one can see what I actually
look like—gender, age, appearance, and demeanour are all incredibly
flexible. Although in theory this is possible in face-to-face role-playing
as well, it is much more difficult to pull off!’ But intonation and body
language are lost over the net. It’s hard to know when you’ve offended
someone, and harder to know when you’ve been forgiven. Players have
to go to great lengths to convey their feelings in text. For example:
Face-to-face Player: [Glares at another player, and speaks in a slow, Clint

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Eastwood rasp]: ‘You oughtn’t have come.’

MUSH Player: Takes-the-Pipe walks stiffly towards Micah, tail raised. He
narrows his eyes and snarls, ~You should not have come.~
These two factors, co-authorship and the use of text for body language,
change the flavour of the game. Sometimes I feel like all that is happen-
ing is that my character, who doesn’t exist, is making friends with other
characters who don’t exist, while I and the other players remain stran-
gers. In tabletop role-playing, I enjoy the company of the other players
while my character does his thing; my character and I have a co-oper-
ative relationship. But on the MUSH, I get the eerie feeling that this
other entity, my character, is living off me parasitically; he lives, while I
merely sit and type.
Literary Role-Play?
When you sit down at the keyboard, something happens. Maybe it’s the
need to convey that extra-textual information, maybe it’s vanity, but
suddenly ordinary telegraphic communication just isn’t good enough.
Whatever you type is going to zoom across the world, onto others’
screens, and into their permanent log files.
So you sit there, watching the cursor blink while you figure out what
to say, and how to say it. You type a line, but before you press return, the
urge to edit takes over. And before you know it, you’re not just playing,
you’re writing. The resulting role-play is a lot slower—it may take as
much as five times as long as a conventional game—but it has a descrip-
tive depth rarely found in face-to-face play. Here’s a verbatim transcript
of a session I played in.
Umbra: Farmyard
This place is a nightmarish rendition of its real world counterpart,
hemmed in closely on three sides by the dark, glowering woods. A spirit’s
corpse—the spirit of a once-happy farmhouse?—lies mouldering in the
centre of the yard. The barn is a shadowy thing, vague and indistinct,
harbouring its own dark thoughts in lightless windows and vast haylofts
that are much too big for the building’s physical limitations. And just
inside the forest’s edge the trees stand jealous guard over the neatly
stacked corpses of their fallen, a woodpile in the real world. To the west,
Weaverspiders tend to the fields, quietly arranging nature’s growth into
predictable rows even after the harvest is in. Domestic animal spirits
seem almost plastered over, quietly accepting their own regimentation in
the provision of food for lazy homids. The woods are deepest and darkest
to the North-east.
The place-descriptions set the tone for the game. The authors can put
more time into place-descriptions on a MUSH than they could in a face-

to-face game, because they will use each place over and over, because
no one author has to write all the descriptions and because they know
the players are going to read the whole thing. If you tried such poetic
language in a face-to-face game, it would probably fall flat.
Su stops to make certain everyone’s all right in the dark farmyard. Her
voice is hushed by the gloom. ‘Let us move into the forest. It too is dark,
but not as much so.’ She turns to move into the forest, and her huge light
wings reflect the moonlight. She flutters them slightly to fold them out
of the way.
Therru stares at Su’s wings.
Su looks down at the stares, having forgotten as usual that her ghostly,
weightless wings are there until she needs them.
Therru blinks and drops her gaze hastily.
Paradoxically, when you must substitute text for real body language, it
has wider scope—how would you communicate the exchange above in
a face-to-face game sans wings? It is also more precise—would Su know
what Therru was staring at? Would we misinterpret Therru’s looking
away as distraction or distaste? Most importantly, the players use it more.
You tread carefully into the Umbral forest.

Umbra: Forest
Despite the Realm’s limitations on this forest —in the ‘real world’ it is
perhaps a square mile in total area—it extends for dozens of miles in
all directions. It’s deep and dark, befitting such a spiritual enigma. A
single gigantic oak tree dominates the centre of this area, as its physical
counterpart does in the Realm. Gnarled and weather-beaten, this tree
has seen countless dozens of human generations come and go.
Sepdet walks over to the great oak tree and kneels and presses her cheek
against it. ‘Hey there.’
Rholeen rubs at her arms, and looks around, seeming to reassure herself
that all this is real.
Su glances up at Sepdet. ‘Would you continue here? There is yet more
patrolling to be done, and this night is good for it.’
Sepdet nods serenely. ‘I will, sister. Walk well.’
Su flickers instantly into Crinos.
You paged Sepdet with ‘Does the tree respond?’
The tree rustles softly on the umbral breezes, a sound that is not speech
but is not random. Amusement, perhaps, or patience, at the little fast-
living creatures that scuttle among its roots.
Su, looking quite regal now despite her ragged fur, lays a companionable
hand on one shoulder of each cub. Then she backs away a step, turns and
in one fluid motion springs upward.
Therru watches Su fly away.
Blinks flinches on seeing the huge tree respond to Sepdet’s touch, and
wraps his arms about himself as if he is suddenly cold.
Su soars silently to the south, banking once to start her surveillance of

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Gauntlet’s territory.
Sepdet smiles delightedly. She steals a wide-eyed glance at Rholeen. ‘Do
you hear? It’s all right, Blinks, it’s just a Tree.’
Therru tears her eyes from Su’s vanishing form and limps over to
investigate the tree.
Blinks says, ‘I know. But spirits … dangerous. Friendly spirits especially.’
Rholeen nods slightly, ‘Maybe. It almost sounds like something trying to
say something. It’s not my imagination, is it?’
Therru sits down abruptly, looking at Blinks with a decidedly bewildered
expression.
Sepdet nods slowly, watching Rholeen’s reaction. ‘It’s saying something.
In different words.’ She sighs and shakes her head at Blinks.
Blinks stamps his feet and glances around the dark woods uneasily.
I wanted to express my character (Blinks)’s fear of spirits, so I privately

nudged Sepdet (via page) to give me a line to work off of. This type of
co-authoring happens all the time on a MUSH, while in a face-to-face
game it’s considered bad form to prompt other players out of character.
It might be because of the privacy of paging, and it might be just that I’m
breaking convention without knowing it, but I believe that it shows that
the players are thinking like writers, planning ahead instead of reacting.
Rholeen cocks her head to the side, and tries to make sense of it. Oddly
enough the harder she tries to concentrate on meaning, the less she
seems to understand it.
This might seem like cheating—could you really tell all that from watch-
ing Rholeen? Yet it’s an accepted convention to signal with text thoughts
and feelings that would be ambiguous in real life. Authors do this too.
They may use the omniscient viewpoint, in which they tell you what eve-
ryone feels and thinks. But this can flood and confuse the reader, and re-
moving the mystery of motivations. More commonly, authors have one
viewpoint character. But rarely will they take the objective viewpoint and
report only observable events. It’s hard to generate story that way.
On a MUSH, you can’t choose one viewpoint character. You end
up with the next best thing: a kind of restricted omniscience. You hear
some of what every character is thinking, scratching the surfaces of their
thoughts a little more deeply than mere body language.
Sepdet gestures gently. ‘Come. Follow. There are places where you can
breathe easy, and I want you to show you those first.’ She touches the tree
and keeps her hand there for a moment, then steps away and begins to
thread an easy slow path in the shadowed forest.
Blinks hurries to catch up with Sepdet, clearly not wanting to be left
behind.
Therru follows Sepdet, loping happily though the spirit world.
Rholeen nods, and follows, her bare feet making slight rustling sounds

on the forest floor.

Sepdet bears southward, taking a quick deer path that traces past ancient
evergreens and small circles of shadow, a wide open space ringed with
massive redwoods, and then suddenly the forest to the left falls away …
Umbra: Lake Arthur
In the centre of a vast rippling lake stands an island, an outcropping of
pure, untainted stone. Groves of ancient trees, their foliage an incredibly
deep green, stand sentinel over the raw granite. A single tower of
weathered grey rock juts from the island’s south-eastern end, its sides
creased and scarred by the elements. A delicate waterfall sparkles in
Luna’s light as it cascades from the tower’s peak into the calm lake below,
veiling the rough granite in shimmering silver. The lake waters surround
the island, but Luna has provided a path that leads east across the crystal
liquid.
Note the frequent use of unnecessary, non-goal-oriented, and delightful

descriptive language. It would be impossible in a face-to-face RPG to say,
‘I lope happily through the spirit world’, or ‘My bare feet make slight
rustling sounds on the forest floor’.
Therru wanders down the lakeside to see if she can taste the umbral
water.
Sepdet gestures out towards the lake. ‘The leader of the crescent moons,
Thorn-rhya, he has a cave out there. But he doesn’t mind company.’
Blinks asks, ‘He lives in Umbra?’
Sepdet shakes her head. ‘Oh, no. I think he stays in the other world,
most of the time.’ She sounds wistful. ‘Not safe any more to stay this side
all time.’
Rholeen says ‘Why?’
Sepdet walks down to the water’s edge, finding the place where the
moon’s path of light touches the shore, and dabbles her hands in the
water. ‘Because … because the True World takes what’s in the other world,
and makes it more so. Bad city streets … they’re cold and cobwebbed and
flow with blood in the cracks, and your feet crunch on broken glass of old
needles, and ashes of burned money. The Enemy walks there. The forests
out here are better—but you saw what the farmhouse is like. Wherever
there’s ill, the Enemy’s spirits breed, and they roam free through the
Umbra. It’s a wilder place, and a more powerful one.’
Look at Sepdet’s speech. Admittedly, few people can write such material
in real time, but on-line editing makes it possible. Almost no one can
speak impromptu with such care for the language.
It’s also noteworthy that Sepdet managed to get the whole thing out!
On a MUSH, no one can interrupt you before you press ENTER. Mono-
logues are allowed.
Therru looks over at Sepdet, water dripping from her muzzle, then places

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an experimental foot on the moonlight in the water. It goes through, but

slowly and with effort. Fascinated, she continues to dabble.
Sepdet says ‘It’s safer with the moon’s light—she’s our sun, here, and the
Enemy shuns her. But by day its creatures walk freer, dare to come closer.
And there’s things that aren’t our enemies that are still too powerful to
be properly safe. Wyld storms, and spirits that tread on leaves and make
you want to hang in the branches forever, and dirt that pulls you down to
your knees to press close against the earth.’
Rholeen frowns. ‘I know this is an obvious question but … isn’t there
anything we can do?’
Therru trots a few steps out onto the moonbridge, seemingly standing
on the water. She tries to put her foot through the surface again.
Sepdet draws something that hums and sparks with a faint blue shimmer
from under the cloth of her jacket at her hip, and holds the grey ceramic
blade up to the moon. ‘We fight,’ she says softly, almost serenely, but the
shadows behind her eyes are pained and painful to see on her young
face.
Sepdet dropped Klaive.
Blinks stares at the klaive hungrily. A faraway look comes over his eyes.
Rholeen looks disturbed, and looks around almost like she is trying to
drink it all in case it fades away like a forgotten dream.
Sepdet strokes the blade’s edge with a finger, then puts the finger in
her mouth and the fetish-creature away. She sighs. ‘You will too, soon
enough.’
Therru manages to put a paw through the water that she is standing
on. She dabbles it around for a moment, then, as if in revenge, the
moonbridge gives way and dunks her in the lake.
Therru yipes and paddles to shore, the moonlight breaking around her
in bright amused sparkles.
Sepdet’s head comes up and she runs a few easy paces out onto the water,
watching Therru’s progress with hands on her hips. ‘What did you say
to it, Flame?’
Blinks jumps in after Therru. He splashes about happily and looks up to
see if anyone else is coming in.
Therru swims to the shore and emerges, shaking herself ruefully.
Rholeen walks to the shore, and watches carefully. ‘Sepdet? Is this really
another world? Or are we just seeing it differently?’
Blinks wades toward shore. He stops a few feet short, and picks at his
nasty wet clothing in surprise.
Sepdet drops to a crouch, balancing carefully on the soles of her feet
as the moonlight-dappled water ripples up and down gently beneath
her. ‘It’s … it’s the world behind the mirror. I don’t know. It’s almost
another world now, for the humans have pulled theirs very far from
spirits, magic, life.’
Therru looks at Sepdet. ‘I did not say anything! I just wanted to see if I
could put my foot through.’
Sepdet nods solemnly at Therru. ‘You succeeded.’
Therru trots down the beach a short distance, politely, before shaking

herself off. Blinks steps to shore and shakes off just where he is.
Note here that Therru didn’t say, ‘I walk on the moonbridge and try to
push my paw through. What happens?’ As co-author, she decided herself
what would happen. Every player is part referee. If your action involves
someone else, you page them to work out what happens, but if it doesn’t,
and you aren’t in a refereed scene, you get to make it up yourself.
Rholeen says, ‘Is it really a mirror world? Right is left?’

Sepdet lifts one leg under her and spins around on one foot very carefully.
‘No … no. Things are more what they really mean, here. The forest trees
are alive, and growing. The city is a maze of glass, and squares, and
things that move back and forth unceasingly like they don’t know why.
Birds don’t fly … they dance across the sky. Right is very right, and left is
just as left as it can be.’
Rholeen nods, her eyes a little glazed. ‘Have you ever read the Narnia
books?’
Sepdet shakes her head negative. ‘I don’t … can’t … read very much.’
Therru wanders over to Sepdet, distracted, and pokes her with her nose.
‘I have read them.’
Sepdet lays her hands on both sides of Therru’s muzzle, just for a second
so as not to confine. ‘Tell me, then.’ She tilts her chin back up to Rholeen.
‘It’s like this?’
Rholeen thinks back. ‘Well, in the final book all the people travel to a
world which is the true world. All the trees are more real, everything is
-bigger-. Not in size, but in being. The brights were brighter, the darks
deeper. When I read that, it seemed so true, even if it was just a story.’
Sepdet looks taken aback. ‘A human book?’
Therru nods.
Sepdet traces a sinuous line in the water. ‘I wonder.’ She grins. ‘I’m glad,
though. Gives you hope?’
Some face-to-face role-players may be surprised to find we have

come to the end of the log without any fighting, sleuthing, or confronta-
tion. Character development and interaction replace the adrenalin rush
from one plot point to the next.
After reading that log, you should see why I referrred to ‘literary
role-play’ in the title of this article. Well-turned phrases are a joy in and
of themselves. (Perhaps MUSHers redirect energy that would have gone
to problem-solving into writing. I often find my writing skill deteriorates
as the plot heats up.)
If you’re considering joining GarouMUSH, you might find the qual-
ity of the writing intimidating. I know I do. When I’m with a group that’s
on a roll, spinning out a well-written story, and I blurt out some bare,
mechanical action, I feel like a bug that just crawled across their fresh
canvas. Other new players have told me they feel the same way. I’ve no-

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ticed that players’ descriptive writing skills are generally proportional to

how long they’ve played on GarouMUSH. I’m not sure whether this is
cause or effect, but all of the players I’ve asked think GarouMUSH has
improved their writing skills.
Characters and Moods

Remember when Therru said she can immerse herself in her charac-
ter more when no one can see her face? This applies to moods as well
as characters. Look at the following log from a Gathering for the De-
parted (a Garou funeral). It’s a short excerpt from the original log, and
the players maintained the same solemn tone throughout. Could your
face-to-face group do as well, before someone became too self-conscious
and broke the mood? Note that, though only Desert speaks for most of
the log, he doesn’t take over; everyone can describe their reactions and
posture without interrupting him. Their silent reflections set the sombre
mood; less than a sixth of the original log is dialogue.
Desert leads along a faint trail down from the hilltop, and up onto another
hill, and another. Before long, the mourning party is ascending into the
mountains, where the stillness of the Umbral day is undisturbed by your
passing. Few Garou have been here since the world was young. Every
tree and every rock seems to watch as you pass, though you continue to
move in near silence. Soon, the way leads to a small plateau overlooking
the world.
Thunder Biter flattens his ears along his head as he follows Thunder-
of-Gaia, still a little dazed and confused. A swift shadow darts over the
plateau, and then vanishes back into the moonlight.
Moon Otter tags along towards the rear of the group, eyes and ears
flitting about nervously.
Desert seems to find this place satisfactory. ‘Place his body in the centre.’
Thunder Biter walks beside Thunder-of-Gaia with his tail lowered and
his ears flat across his head. He starts to look around him for the first
time, though, exploring with his eyes and nose this new place. Drifting
down from above comes the shrill icicle of a bird cry. It shivers down your
spine and vanishes into the silence of the Umbra. Looking up you see a
vague form flitting across the moon.
Song-Weaver nods once and does as bidden. After placing the body in
the centre she stands and walks to a place across from where Desert is.
She turns to face him and returns to her own shape.
Thunder-of-Gaia stays to the front of the group, seemingly accepting
both Harald and Chaser as belonging towards the front with the tribe of
the fallen. He watches Song closely, though his posture shows more rage
than mourning.
Desert gestures for the lot of you to settle in a circle around him. Another
shadow floats over the plateau, and then another. The shapes slowly start
to take form as small specks drifting through the umbral sky.

Thunder Biter stands beside Thunder-of-Gaia silently, watching with

wide, curious eyes everything around him.
Desert takes up a slender knife and slices the fur and the fat from Earth-
Child’s left side as he speaks, his words forestalling any objection. ‘In my
time at Wheel, I have fought beside Bloodfang, and he is dead. I have
fought beside Broken Claw, and he is dead. I have fought beside Earth-
Child, and now he is dead. So, too, have I fought beside Song Weaver.
I have ever been friend to the Talons, and I am honoured to sing the
Gathering on this night.’
Chaser remains silent, eyes narrowed, but her stance tenses at the
movement of the knife, and the delicate nostrils flare. A diving swoop
and a hoarse cry is all the warning you are given as a large eagle dives
down towards you, and then past you, hurtling down past the plateau.
Desert makes deeper incisions now, revealing bloody sinew and jagged
ribs. ‘There is a story my people tell, that the First Garou were of the Red
Wolves, and that the Red Wolves will be the last Garou to fall, survived
only by traitors who turn to Zhongcairen the Wyrm and to Shejishi the
Weaver.’
Desert continues his grisly work, laying open Earth-Child’s entrails.
More cries fill the air, and you catch a glimpse of a peregrine falcon
hurtling past you.
Conclusion
Much of my article on computers and interactive fiction in the first issue
of this magazine was a search for the way out of the puzzle-solving, goal-
directed, genre-based rut that interactive fiction seems to have fallen
into. On MUSHes, I’ve found the way out. People stop acting like puz-
zle-solvers when they start acting like authors, and they start acting like
authors when they have a good medium and an audience. The problem
of freedom versus drama (that player-freedom is at odds with authorial-
direction), and the worries I expressed under the heading ‘Multi-reader
interactive fiction’ (that people would not be able to view all parts of the
plot, or get key items for puzzles), were stated under the assumption that
some author-on-high was handing one plot down to the readers. They
disappear when the readers are also the writers.
In that same article, I drooled over the introduction of virtual real-
ity to interactive fiction at some point in the near future. But the flashy
graphic interface will kill the world of carefully crafted prose. Instead of
writing, players will have a graphical emotion interface—click here for a
grin, there for a glower. They will be that much less authors, creating one
out of an infinite number of possible actions, and more merely players,
choosing from a menu.
It may be that these are the glory days of the literate MUSH, which
will soon join Infocom in that great bit-bucket in the sky. Virtual reality
MUSH players will not slide back into self-centred puzzle-solving. They

Technology
will still be responsible for their own stories. It may be that, further down
the line, VR will allow fine muscular control over virtual puppets, open-
ing up the world of acting and a new kind of creativity. But for now, you
might want to log in to a good text mush before they disappear.
GarouMUSH is at cesium.clock.org (17.255.4.43), port 7000. It is not cur-

rently accepting new players, but you can “connect guest guest” for a look around.
Phil Goetz is a doctorial student of computer science at the University of Buffalo,

specializing in artificial intelligence. He has played and written role-playing and
adventure games for most of his life.

Interactive Television
Is there more to interactive television than
phone-in game shows? Nathan Cubitt looks
at the technical problems, and discusses
the field with the producer of Talking
Telephone Numbers.
Interacting with other gamers or a game world is part of the joy of gam-
ing. As technology races forward, it will probably open up more avenues
for the gamer to explore. Improved digital and compression technology
has made it possible to receive TV programmes and films through the
telephone line. Perhaps before the turn of the millenium the century’s
greatest narrative form, cinema, could become interactive.
This has all been brought about by the development of CD-ROM,
and by the adoption of a standard for video compression—MPEG (Mov-
ing Pictures Expert Group). MPEG is the compression standard which
has been set by ‘The White Book’, which was co-developed by Philips,
Sony, Matsushita and JVC. It outlines a way to store up to 74 minutes
of VHS-quality video with a stereo audio track. It is this technology that
enables Video-on-Demand to be delivered down the phone line.
The White Book standard has also made VideoCDs available, and
this is the first step towards interactive cinema. The VideoCD opens up
the avenue of non-linear viewing—any scene can be viewed instantly,
without having to spool through video tape. However, the MPEG1 com-
pression does have problems: reds can appear artificial, the image can
look pixellated, image quality on long-shots is poor, and sometimes the
screen image can freeze momentarily. To combat this MPEG2 will be
released soon, and MPEG4 is in development for high-definition TV.
MPEG represents the first tottering steps towards interactive cinema
as standard. Other companies are developing compression and trans-
mission techniques to lead towards this goal. BT has developed com-
pressed satellite transmitters that enabled footage from the yachts in

Technology
the Whitbread Challenge to be sent to production companies. It is also

looking at increasing interactive viewing—by compressing footage taken
at sporting events. This will enable more than one signal to be sent to
the same TV receiver, thereby allowing the viewer to select which camera
signal they want to see, and allowing them to cut between them at will.
The viewer will become the director.
Talking Telephone Numbers

Since TV has lower production costs than cinema, and since a plethora
of new cable and satellite stations are already in place, we can expect
TV to be the first medium to give us interactive viewing. According to
the press this has already happened. The UK is an interactive viewing
nation right now. Programmes such as Talking Telephone Numbers and Do
The Right Thing claim to be interactive. They are not narrative-driven;
they are more like traditional game shows. Talking Telephone Numbers has
a relatively simple format. During the show, five numbers of between
0-9 are randomly selected through competitions and sketches. When all
five numbers have been selected, if they match, in any order, the last five
digits of your telephone number, you are eligible to play. You do this
by phoning in and answering three questions. The callers are chosen
randomly, and the first chosen caller who answers the questions cor-
rectly walks off with £10,000. Can this really be called interactive TV? I
discussed these and other issues with Paul Smith, chairperson of Celador
Productions and executive producer of Talking Telephone Numbers.
Q: Could you give your definition of interactive TV?
A: Interactive TV is, as far as I’m concerned, a programme which
an individual can be part of and can influence, however it may be con-
structed. I don’t think that the show that Terry Wogan does (Do The Right
Thing) where views vote by phone for ending ‘A’ or ending ‘B’ is true
interactive TV. It’s only vaguely interactive.
I think that the CD-ROM and CDI companies that are saying they
will allow the audience to choose the end or determine the direction of
the plot will find that the trend will be very short lived, if attractive at all.
I think that an audience wants to be led; watchers don’t want to deter-
mine what’s going to happen in a plot, they want to be mystified. They
want to have a twist to the plot—just when they thought that the butler
was the guy that did it, it turns out to be the maid after all. If they can
actually decide and determine who it is, what surprise element is there
going to be? That’s what successful scriptwriting is all about; it’s about
taking an audience in one direction and then suddenly changing in a di-
rection they’d never imagined. While I think interactivity is very interest-
ing it is just a gimmick, and I think that, strangely enough, they’re using
the gimmick in the wrong way. I don’t think it’ll survive on just merely

Interactive Television by Nathan Cubitt
having ‘choose A, B, or C ending’ or ‘what do you want to happen now’.

I think that will be boring as hell, and it’ll go out of the window very fast.
Q: Because it took about two years for Talking Telephone Numbers to
go from pilot to series, do you think that TV shows are always going to
lag behind technology?
A: Well, I have to say that we really don’t use technology, what we do
isn’t really sophisticated, it’s terribly straightforward. We have a much
more sophisticated interactive show that we’ve now developed, Win-
ning Lines, but if you think about it anything that we do doesn’t require
current technology—it could have been done years ago, we’ve only just
thought of it now. The new show isn’t technology-led and once the coun-
try has cable TV then anything interactive like this will become simple
to do.
Winning Lines uses a voting system to determine the answers to ques-
tions from an audience at home, and it takes them through a route sys-
tem. If they get question ‘A’, right they go on to ‘B’ and go all the way
through the programme, while all the people who were incorrect get
knocked out. But like Talking Telephone Numbers, as the programme starts
the entire population are potential winners, and we think this is the suc-
cess of Talking Telephone Numbers. People sit down at seven o’clock and
until the first number is generated everyone has an equal chance of win-
ning.
Q: Why is interactive television attractive to viewers; more so than
normal television?
A: Most game shows are passive, which means that although the au-
dience at home can answer the questions, it doesn’t matter whether they
get them right or wrong. The producers use somebody who has been
preselected, carefully chosen, and rehearsed, who might win the money,
or motor car, or holiday … The person at home never gets a chance to
participate, unless they make an application to the production company.
Whereas the success of this programme, Talking Telephone Numbers, is
that it allows the audience to participate without any preselection, and
that’s the most important thing.
Q: How do you see the future of interactive television, and is Celador
going to be involved?
A: Well, at Celador we make light entertainment, light features, light
documentaries and light events programmes, so we’re only interested in
interactive television if it has a use within the broadest terms of popular
light entertainment. If somebody comes up with a formula for the use of
interactive television in current affairs, which is an obvious choice as it
happens, then we’re not particularly interested.
We had a show years ago, Everybody’s Equal, with an audience of 200
with little keypads, who were asked questions and gradually whittled
down to one, who was the winner. That was interactivity on a small scale,

Technology
but once again there was no particular preselection. Since then we’ve
developed our ideas further, but it’s always been in the realms of light
entertainment.
Q: It seems that it is the software companies which are channelling
research into interactivity on CD-ROM. Do you believe that they will
become the market leaders?
A: The potential of certain ideas in interactivity is incredible; obvi-
ously with CD-ROM and cable there are great possibilities. But in games,
the most basic of uses, such as getting the girl, or a man, to strip; allow-
ing the player to choose what they want to happen: this isn’t altering
the plot but is just taking an event in a certain direction. I think that’s
a different matter. The games that have been around for ages, flying a
747, or driving a racing car, are, as far as I’m concerned, interactive in
that one is determining what is going to happen, and this type of game
will remain successful. But I don’t think that the idea of interactive nar-
rative will be anything that will last for long. I think that it’ll be very, very
short-lived.
Towards Interactive Movies

Paul Smith raises some interesting points, and although at first I didn’t
consider Talking Telephone Numbers to be interactive, I now feel that,
perhaps, he is right. It is interactive in its truest form—everyone in the
country can take part. And perhaps this does need defining, to distin-
guish it from the type of ‘interactive narrative’ that more readily comes
to mind when talking about interaction in movies and on television. My
own suggestion is that a show in which a viewer can take part is interac-
tive. A show, film, whatever, in which either one person on their own, or
a majority decision determines the outcome at given moments should
be termed interaction.
‘Interaction’ films do exist. Recently, Sony brought out the ‘world’s
first interactive film’, called Mr Payback, which featured Billy Warlock
as a cyborg do-gooder. Every ninety seconds the audience members
can decide between three options as to how the film progresses. This is
achieved by a colour-coded joystick attached to every cinema seat. Ac-
cording to Warlock:
It’s a movie, and it’s a sort of game. I prefer to think of it as a movie. You
will participate in the movie, and the direction it will go, what you might
see or do … a lot of Hollywood is looking at it as a gimmick: ‘oh, it’ll
never work’, it’s just doing something new and different and you either
enjoy it or you don’t.
To see everything that features in the movie would take 27 viewings, and
there are 25 different endings. Viewing the movie is also somewhat dif-
ferent from a typical evening at the cinema. A Sony spokesperson said
that ‘Instead of a little trailer up on the screen that says “please be quiet”

Interactive Television by Nathan Cubitt
we want to encourage people to have fun, to talk to other people about

how they should vote.’ At the moment though, the progress of interac-
tive (or interaction) cinema is hampered by the price: it currently costs
$100,000 to equip each cinema. ‘We’re starting out very small, we have a
limited number of screenings in smaller cinemas, and we’re taking baby
steps to figure out what are people going to like to do in the cinema.’ So,
is interaction really just around the corner?
Technology In Question
The main problem is that of storage and cost. The CD-ROM format
currently only has 650mb capacity. It has been estimated that even us-
ing MPEG compression, to give the viewer two choices every second the
amount of footage the CD-ROM could contain would be enough for
eleven seconds of play. The cost also has to be considered. An interac-
tive film would have to have several different choices, each one of which
would have to be filmed. So the more choices, the more footage, the
greater the cost. With such an ever-changing plot line, you can only feel
sorry for the poor thespian who has to determine differing character
motivations.
At the same time, the television industry as a whole is suffering from
an inability to determine a standard viewing platform. In recording you
have Beta, D2, D3, MII, DigiBeta, 1”, etc. In transmission the US uses
NTSC; the UK, PAL.
Even new technology doesn’t escape. The current goal is High Defi-
nition TV (HDTV), and the technology exists for transmission now. But
this has also been fraught with problems. The US decided on digital
broadcast, Europe on a combination of analogue and digital, with an
in-between version, known as PALPLUS. Europe also decided on a dif-
fering number of lines on the screen, i.e. a different resolution, and a
different timescale. It was, and still is, possible for HDTV to become a
world-wide platform—one where a British set could show American pro-
grammes without conversion. But given the mess that has been made
out of it, we’ll be lucky to get HDTV by the year 2000. So what hope
does interactive viewing really have? Besides, when HDTV does become
standard transmission, all interactive viewing would have to be filmed
on the HDTV screen ratio of 16:9 (currently it is 4:3), again, increasing
costs dramatically.
In Mr Payback, it is the majority decision that is selected; the pref-
erences of the minority are ignored. This could be one of the biggest
stumbling blocks in the path of in-teractivity. The only way for a single
viewer to decide the whole course of the story is for that person to be
the sole viewer. Although cable technology allows a degree of relatively
unsophisticated interaction, I cannot foresee a time when it would be

possible to broadcast nationwide a truly interactive film. It would seem
much more likely that such an interactive film would have to be sold on
CD-ROM or similar, and that would firmly place it in both the realms of
interaction and gaming. ‘Interaction’-style viewing, on a broadcast level,
is likely to be stillborn.
Thanks to Paul Smith for undertaking this interview one hour before transmis-
sion, with the ‘flu; and to Guy Champniss for arranging it.
The youthful Nathan Cubitt trained as a geologist, but turned to television after
realizing that trilobites were extinct and would slither off casting couches in any
case. He has worked on Jack and Jeremys, Police 4 and 10%ers, combining
this with his job at a leading post-production company. He edits the role-playing
fanzine Delusions of Grandeur.

Analysis
This section steps outside the
world of recreational gaming
to look at interactive narrative
from a more theoretical
perspective; bringing in
approaches from philosophy,
psychology and art criticism,
and examining other ways in
which the form is used

Walk a Mile in
Someone Else’s Shoes
Mark S. Holsworth goes from ancient
Athens to Glorantha to find out what role-
playing games can teach us about ethics and
morality
What makes scenarios into effective ethical speculations? In order to

consider this question, I will look at two scenarios: ‘The Ring of Gyges’
from Plato’s Republic and the Morakanth encounter from Greg Stafford
and Steve Perrin’s RuneQuest scenario, Borderlands. Both of the scenarios
are short, very good and focus attention on ethics. In considering them
I will also look at the universalizability of moral statements, which is at
the core of most moral systems. I will argue that role-playing games de-
velop one’s capacity to universalize because they embody the concept
of consideration of another as oneself. To imagine walking a mile in
someone else’s shoes is an essential part of being open-minded enough
to consider others.
‘The Ring of Gyges’ is part of Plato’s Republic but the concept has
worked its way into much classic fantasy role-playing. Tolkien appears to
have borrowed the major theme for both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings
from it. In the Republic Glaucon presents this scenario to Socrates. The
ring of Gyges was a ring of invisibility and with such a ring you could
commit any crime you liked and get away with it. So what would you do
if you found the ring? The players—in the first instance Socrates him-
self—must explain from the perspective of the person with the ring what
they would do and why they would still be a good person. This raises
questions such as: ‘What happens to justice if there could be something
like the ring of Gyges in the world?’; ‘If one relies on external forces,
such as praise and blame, rewards and punishment, are undetected ac-
tions of no consequence for the wearer?’; and ‘If you believe in an ulti-

Ethics and Roleplay by Mark S. Holsworth
mate good, guiding people to do what is right, how does this affect the
wearer of the ring?’ The mere possibility of such a magic item is a major
challenge to moral systems. That one person should be able to wear the
ring of Gyges is not fair on everyone else.
One of the best scenarios illustrating ethical dilemmas written
for a commercial role-playing game is the Morokanth encounter in Bor-
derlands. (This was written for second-edition RuneQuest; unfortunately
this scenario has not been included in the Avalon Hill re-release of Bor-
derlands for the third edition). The Morokanths are sentient beasts who
herd humans. These humans have had their intelligence lowered to
that of cattle through a magical process. Two Agamori hunters, human
tribesmen, have been caught by the Morokanths stealing from the herds.
The Morokanths want to lower the intelligence of the captured thieves—
‘they must be punished like any herd thief ’. If the Morokanths do that
the Agamori will go to war against the Morokanths. The Morokanths
and the Agamori want the PCs, as impartial judges and representatives
of the Lunar Empire, to arbitrate in a dispute. This raises an issue of
justice very clearly: ‘What is fair treatment for the captured men?’ Many
ethical questions may be raised in the PCs’ discussion of what to do;
questions about the universality of judgements, revenge and justice may
arise.
Before we go any further, let’s get a few terms clear. Ethics is the
philosophical examination of the fundamental principles and concepts
of morality, and should be distinguished from morality itself. This essay
is about ethics and role-playing, and not about the ethics of role-play-
ing; which would probably involve issues of sportsmanship, fudging dice
rolls and other items of game etiquette. There has been a lot of writing
about morality and role-playing, generally from Christians. At best these
moralizing comments on the text or content of role-playing games are
buying into the ‘art must be moral’ debate, which seeks to determine the
ethical boundaries of creativity. I will be forced to examine some of these
comments because they stand contrary to what I will be arguing.
A great deal of writing and discussion about role-playing is concerned
with ethics because, as Nathan Gribble points out:
Role-playing is a moral [read ‘ethical’] forum, in which issues such as

violence, prejudice and power can be explored. This admittedly is a two-
edged sword, since role-playing games often depict a lot of gratuitous
killing and other dubious activities (Interactive Fantasy #2).
The reason why role-playing is an ethical forum rather than a moral

forum is that a dwarf yelling, ‘Kill Orcs! Kill Orcs!’ contributes nothing
to morality unless one believes that killing orcs is good. It does, however,
raise ethical questions about genocide. The examination of the princi-
ples and concepts of a fantasy world is still the subject of ethics.

Analysis
Thought Experiments
Philosophical scenarios, such as those proposed by the utilitarians, ask
the readers to make a decision about what they would do in a given set
of circumstances. The results are used to prove the theory. For example,
you are in control of a railway switching yard and there is a runaway train
heading down tracks on which five children are playing, while on the
only other track there are two workmen. What would you do; who would
you save? Your choice in this scenario is expanded to make universal
propositions about the value of lives—that is, in extending what is good
for me to a universal good.
The importance of this logical feature of morality is its use in moral
argument, since if we admit that particular moral judgements are linked
to universal rules we are prevented from making arbitrary decisions in
respect of given individuals (Dictionary of Philosophy ed. Antony Flew).
The results of these thought experiments are taken to be a kind of
proof in philosophy.
Thought experiments like ‘The Ring of Gyges’ are a kind of inter-
active fiction in the same sense in which Andrew Rilstone in Interactive
Fantasy #2 suggested that the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius might be
seen as ‘a form of sacred role-playing’. All fiction is, in one way, interac-
tive; in that the reader has to react to printed text by imagining them-
selves to be the spectator to the story. The reader reacts with feelings of
sympathy, empathy and even identification with the characters.
Philosophical thought experiments are slightly different because
they are an interactive narration; a scenario is proposed and each par-
ticipant concentrates on different characters in the creation of the story.
Philosophers play characters in these scenarios, heroes and villains,
plain-thinking men or children. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is perhaps the
most famous of these characters.
‘The Ring of Gyges’ is no different to the Morokanth Encounter in
what it demands of the participants—that is, participation in the telling
of a story and the making of decisions about justice in a fictional world.
Both of the scenarios are short and open-ended, getting quickly to the
ethical dilemma. They are open-ended since the designer would not
want to presuppose the outcome of the ethical forum. (‘The Ring of Gy-
ges’ is still an open-ended proposition even though Plato puts forward
Socrates’ solution to it.)
Neither of the scenarios relies on rules. The Morokanth scenario
contains no game statistics or other RuneQuest rules references. Glau-
con’s scenario does not rely on natural laws; the PCs are making the
rules for themselves because they are beyond the restraint of others. In
the Morokanth scenario they are asked to be judges and make a ruling in
which there have been no prior rulings. In both cases, the characters are
free moral agents, freed by magic or by judicial powers, allowing them

to act and in doing so to define what they consider correct behaviour.

The lack of reliance on rules is part of the open-ended nature of the sce-
nario: the PCs are not restricted by chance or rules in their finding of a
solution. There is no easy answer to either scenario; Alasdair MacIntyre
in A Short History of Ethics argues that Socrates’ solution relies on false
belief, and when I played the Morokanth encounter my gaming group
admitted that our solution was a cop-out. There has been more follow-
up discussion and analysis of Glaucon’s scenario than of the Morokanth
encounter, but that is the nature of academic philosophy. On the other
hand RuneQuest allows the repercussions of the Morokanth scenario a
longer time to play themselves out during the Borderlands campaign.
There is a difference in focus between Glaucon’s scenario, which is used
to create ethical debate, and the Morokanth scenario, where ethical de-
bate is used to create interest in the scenario, but the mechanics of the
scenario are the same.
In Inter*action #1 Allen Varney argues that role-playing games
should present a clear moral picture rather than an amoral background.
This is, in fact, a request for scenario writers to give moral authority.
This clear moral picture would foreclose on the open-ended nature of
the scenario—if there were a clearly correct solution to either scenario
the players would take it. The open-ended nature, low reliance on rules
and lack of easy solutions to the scenarios is essential in making them
effective ethical forums. RuneQuest’s Glorantha emphasized a relativist
ethic, as well as relativist cosmology, mythology etc. ‘The Ring of Gyges’
does not; Hellenic morality is reflected. But neither of these two points
are important because the scenarios are not good ethical forums due to
their correct ethical or moral background. The ethical background of
both these scenarios is irrelevant to their ethical content, which exists in
the players’ discourse.
When an author does not present a clear moral picture to the reader
or challenges their belief system, some readers feel confused and appeal
to another authority to tell them how they should feel about what they
have read. What these readers are complaining about is that the heu-
ristic programme of the text is not commandments from an authority
on morality but an internal programme of discovery. The ‘amoral back-
ground’ of these texts is their openness to ethical exploration. When
we put on the ring of Gyges we are exploring our own beliefs about the
nature of ethics and not following the dictates of a moral authority. The
fact that some readers strongly object on religious or moral grounds to a
piece of text tells us more about the reader than the text. This response
is a mask for their own lack of moral clarity—methinks they doth protest
too much.
Instead of presenting a moral background to emphasize an ethical
position, both of the scenarios present a conflict that must be resolved

Analysis
and justified. This conflict is between the initial desires of the characters
and their moral judgement. Many scenarios have this aspect which is
one of the reasons why role-playing is considered an ethical forum. With
the ‘Ring of Gyges’ one’s initial thought is the unrestrained use of the
ring to fulfil one’s desires. With the Morokanth scenario one might have
a number of initial prejudices towards the human Agamori and towards
peace. Being made responsible for their judgement, the PCs in the Mo-
rokanth encounter feel that they have to justify their position. Once out-
side moral codes, the wearer of the ring of Gyges is free to examine mo-
rality from a unique position. This re-examination of morality in order
to provide justifications gives these scenarios their ethical depth. The
judicial position means that they must not only settle this dispute but
make a ruling that will settle future disputes of this nature, emphasizing
the universalizability of their judgement.
The individuals in the scenarios are making moral judgements about
particular circumstances. However, they imply a universal judgement.
Mackie writes that:
Moral judgements are universalizable. Anyone who says, meaning it,

that a certain action (or person, or state of affairs, etc.) is morally right
or wrong, good or bad, ought or ought not to be done (or imitated,
or pursued, etc.) is thereby committed to taking the same view about
any other relevantly similar action (etc.) This principle, in some sense, is
beyond dispute (Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong).
Universalization in moral codes is generally expressed in terms of the

golden rule: ‘do unto others as you would like others to do unto you’ or
‘walk a mile in someone else’s shoes’. Universalizability is of central im-
portance in R. M. Hare’s moral philosophy (Freedom and Reason), it also
plays a large part in Kant’s Groundwork, and provides the main theme
of Peter Singer’s ethical philosophy. Mackie’s examination of universali-
zation indicates that good role-playing abilities are required to fully un-
derstand other people’s position.
Mackie describes three stages of universalization; in the first stage
we ignore irrelevant numerical differences, such as proper names and
indexical terms. This is a very crude form of role-playing where we just
change the names and positions. At this stage we may see little reason
for protecting rights that we do not enjoy. This is highlighted by Bernard
Shaw’s comment on the Golden Rule: ‘Do not do unto others as you
would have that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the
same’.
At the second stage of universalization we put ourselves in another’s
place and consider their feelings. However, a fanatical Nazi, even when
imagining themselves to be Jewish and considering the Jew’s feelings,
might still believe that Jews ought to be exterminated. For, although they

would consider the personal pain and suffering, they might still believe
that it would be better for the world if all Jews were exterminated. In
order to eliminate this kind of unfairness we must take universalization
to a third stage.
With the third stage of universalizability we are taking account of
differences of taste and rival ideas. This third stage is what I’ve always
considered to be role-playing with depth of character, where the player
considers the different tastes and ideas of the character.
It is clear that role-playing is about putting one’s self in another’s
place and that a good role-player will play out the different tastes and
ideas of a character. At this stage one might ask whether there are lim-
its to the third stage of universalizability. Should one even consider the
tastes and rival ideas of non-Christians, non-human animals, raping and
pillaging Vikings, vampires and other monsters? I can hear the Nazi
saying, ‘I won’t play at being Jewish’. Socrates could have said, ‘I won’t
play at being Gyges’ (who was a rapist, an assassin and a usurper) but he
didn’t. If we can’t imagine ourselves as an inhuman killer then we will
have difficulty in dealing fairly with our cat.
Art and Morality

The question about whether or not art should be moral is a very old
one: since art is enjoyable or ‘good’ in an aesthetic sense should it not
also be ‘good’ in the ethical sense? Plato would have banned all art-
ists from his Republic because he didn’t believe that these people knew
anything about the form of the Good. Aristotle was more practical and
less extreme in his understanding of art but still believed that a moral
content was necessary. In this century, few serious artists and critics be-
lieve that art should be moral. Art is now generally considered to be
above moralistic accusations of pornography and corruption of public
morals. That something is art is a defence against such accusations, as in
the Mapplethorpe trials. The debate has therefore tended to shift to an
examination of whether non-serious art (movies, comic books, TV and
role-playing games) are moral or immoral forces.
Asking people to imagine themselves in possession of the ring of
Gyges is not a morally corrupting experience, it is a challenge to their
belief system. Challenging ideas appear to threaten but do no actual
harm. Interestingly, both of these scenarios contain obviously fictional
features—the magical ring and the non-human sentient Morokanths—
as if to emphasize the fictional nature of the moral challenge and so
relieve pressure on the participant’s real moral concerns. Speculations
are a way of exploring ethics in safe conditions. Through a discussion of
the speculation and the consequences we come to understand our own
moral position. The challenge becomes a clarifying experience.

Analysis
The transference of univers-alizable experiences from game-play to

reality is a matter of debate. Psychological examinations of transference
indicate that traditional role-playing procedures have only modest va-
lidity. (see Keith Hurley’s ‘Psychology and Psychotherapy’ in Inter*action
#1). Sociological examinations of transference of fiction or of movies to
real life is even less conclusive. This is probably a good thing, consider-
ing all of the violence and injustice portrayed in role-playing and other
forms of story-telling. But perhaps we need not be so demanding in our
test for the resonances of fictional worlds transferring into our reality,
because all universalization needs is an encouragement, an opening of
the possibilities of consideration of another’s perspective. The possibility
of considering another’s position through role-playing is an opening to
a better ethical understanding. This new ethical awareness may not be
accurately measurable. However, it seems likely that the similarity be-
tween the universalizability of moral statements and the nature of role-
playing would make role-playing games a positive ethical force.
Mark S. Holsworth has an M.A. in philosophy and is a RuneQuest fanatic. He

is a contributing author to Sun Country and Tales of the Reaching Moon.
He has co-designed an educational game about the Greenhouse Effect and is an
active member of the gaming community in Melbourne, Australia.

The Circle Stands
Unbroken
Martin Oliver takes a closer look at gender
in role-playing.
Role-playing is a man’s game. It’s true statistically. It’s true of its image.
But it’s not clear why this is true. Nonetheless, the proportion of males
buying role-playing products will ensure that games continue to be de-
signed for a predominantly male audience—a vicious and unfortunate
circle.
This article grew from a suspicion that it was more than just stereo-
typed artwork which alienated women from recreational role-playing
games. However, what these deeper reasons might be was unclear. For-
tunately, similar areas such as fantasy literature and computer games
have investigated this same problem. Looking at what they concluded
will help highlight the problems in role-playing, and suggest how the
genre can be put back on course.
Fantasy literature is widely read but poorly studied. However, in the
more reputable field of children’s literature, concerns have been ex-
pressed about women in fantasy. As with role-playing, the audience of
fantasy books is predominantly male, and so books geared towards a
female audience have been seized upon for analysis. Studying The Hero
and the Crown by Robin McKinley enabled Altmann to pinpoint one fac-
tor behind the low level of female interest: they find no one to identify
with. Few stories feature many women at all, and still less have a female
protagonist. Of these, the majority are perceived as being ‘only nomi-
nally women’. One of her students commented that:
This book isn’t about a woman; it’s just another case of welding brass tits
on the armour. This book doesn’t talk about me. A book that really had
a woman as hero would validate women’s lives as we live them, would
recognize that what women actually are and do is worthwhile and central.
I don’t ride war-horses and fight dragons and wear armour. I’m sick of

Analysis
books that make women heroes by turning them into men. (Altmann,
1992)
This problem is equally true for role-playing. Can stories and games
avoid this, whilst retaining an heroic atmosphere? Winston argues that
it is not only possible, but simple to do so, and uses the story ‘The En-
chanter’s Daughter’ to illustrate this:
[The heroine] does not become a surrogate male to compete with and
defeat patriarchal oppression; she does not adopt male values; she asserts
her female nature, her female values, and triumphs. (Winston, 1994)
What is needed is a move towards more realistic characters, who possess

qualities appropriate to their gender. The case mentioned by Altmann
simply shows that a women adopting a male archetype can seem in-
appropriate and unconvincing. Care must be taken with any character,
especially those of a competitive or authoritative nature. ‘A woman, a
queen or prime minister, may for a time fill a man’s role; that chang-
es nothing. Authority is male’ (Le Guin, 1993). However, this does not
mean that female characters should be prevented from being warriors
or holding power. The shift is more subtle: they should be allowed to
hold it on their own terms, and not merely become men in all but body.
How can we achieve this?
Revisioning
‘Revisioning’ is the term used to describe the process of revising a story
or setting through re-envisioning the gender roles of the characters and
the narrator. One area where this process has taken a great hold is in the
study of folk and fairy stories (Winston, 1994). Out of this have emerged
two strategies for addressing the problems of gender.
The first is a process labelled ‘disturbance’. This is an appeal to the
intellect of the reader, and it works by empowering minor characters
and exposing what might otherwise be taken for granted. The results
often tend towards satire or caricature, and Jay Williams’ The Practical
Princess And Other Liberating Fairy Tales is an excellent example of the
comic consequences this approach can have.
The second approach is simply to provide alternative role-models
(especially, although not exclusively, for girls). Often these will already
exist, and simply need rediscovering. ‘Clever Gretchen’ and Other Forgotten
Folk Tales by Alison Lurie has done just this, and shown that the process
of revisioning need not be a clumsy and intrusive exercise in political
correctness. Instead, new role-models can be built on traditional arche-
types simply by stressing key character traits, such as the inner strength
of heroines as opposed to the external prowess of heroes.

The Circle Stands Unbroken by Martin Oliver
This leads back to the apparent tokenism of women warriors. His-

torically, there are numerous women who could be used as a model for
such a character (Brooks, 1987); Boudicca and Joan of Arc are only the
two most famous. There are also many more who have achieved author-
ity or fame whilst disguised as men. Examples of this happening occur
frequently in folk songs such as ‘The Female Drummer’, ‘The Banks of
the Nile’, or ‘Sovay’.
However, these historical precedents are a far cry from being token
women in men’s roles, or women who are no more than accessories.
‘Women are seen in relation to heroes: as mother, wife, seducer, belov-
ed, victim or rescuable maiden’ (Le Guin, 1993). Instead, they form a
diverse group of strong characters; they do not fit neatly into any sin-
gle archetype since their motivations and styles were highly personal.
Similar conclusions have been made about female villains and criminals,
pointing once more to the motives behind their actions: love, idealism
and poetic justice coming high on the list (Lidman, 1987). It is this in-
vestment of personality that makes them interesting, and suggests how
to avoid creating inappropriate characters.
The mythopoeticists err, I think, in using the archetype as a rigid, filled

mould. If we see it only as a vital potentiality, it becomes a guide into
mystery. Fullness is a fine thing, but emptiness is the secret of it (ibid,
1993).
Fleshing out the figure can be as simple as making a single alteration.

Winston describes, for example, a story in which the role of the evil step-
mother is taken by a step-father instead. In itself, this would be merely a
token man taking a villainess’s role. Changing his attitudes towards his
daughter from jealousy to possessiveness makes the character sinister,
interesting, and considerably more believable.
The first step to escaping the circle, then, is to take greater care with
characters, ensuring that they are more than just plot accessories. Break-
ing clichés is sure to have a positive effect on role-playing. Breaking cli-
chés of gender is surely a key step towards integrating female players.
Manipulating Underlying Metaphors

‘It is an established pattern in many fairy tales for the central character
… to start out in material poverty but to end up rich’ (Winston, 1994). If
we were to substitute ‘role-playing games’ for ‘fairy tales’, the statement
would remain equally true. Most campaigns describe characters’ pro-
gress towards affluence or influence. Often, material gain is a reflection
of (and almost a metaphor for) internal development.
Improbable as it may seem, some games have inadvertently parodied
this process, making character development a consequence of material

Analysis
gain—the experience system of Dungeons & Dragons is a perfect exam-

ple of this. Le Guin (1993) comments that ‘the hero-tale has concerned
the establishment or validation of manhood. It has been the story of a
quest, or a conquest, or a test, or a contest. It has involved conflict and
sacrifice.’ Part of the structure of the hero-tale is a cycle of questing, test-
ing and reward, and it is this last that enables material gain to mirror
development in the stories.
Adopting this pattern is implicitly accepting the value system of the
hero-tale, and this is not a pattern which allows room for ‘womanly’ her-
oism.
Tenar certainly considers herself independent and responsible; she

is ready to decide and to act. She has not abnegated power. But her
definition of action, decision, and power is not heroic in the masculine
sense. Her acts and choice do not involve ascendance, domination,
power over others, and seem not to involve great consequences. They
are ‘private’ acts and choices, made in terms of immediate, actual
relationships. To those who still believe that the public and the private
can be separated, that there is a great world of men and war and politics
and business, and a little world of women and children and personal
relations, and that these are truly worlds apart, one important, the other
not—to such readers, Tenar’s choice will appear foolish, and her story
sadly unheroic. (Le Guin, 1993)
The hero-tale is not the only possible structure for stories, however. One
alternative, cited by Altmann (1992), is drawn from domestic realist fic-
tion.
[There are] five phases of the quest for rebirth: splitting off from family,
husbands, lovers; the green-world guide or token; the green-world lover;
confrontation with parental figures; and the plunge into the unconscious.
(Altmann, 1992)
Here, the ‘green-world’ figure is something or someone outside of estab-

lished society, who is a guide to but not the goal of the quest. The most
significant change, though, is that the move is not from poverty to power
but security to self-discovery. This need not, unlike in the hero-tale, be
externalized.
Another option becomes possible in role-playing games. This in-
volves using the game’s interactivity to help players define their own
structures. The process of providing a situation and letting players de-
velop their own meanings and developments is one which has been em-
ployed successfully in an ‘anti-sexist simulation’ used as a training game
(Robson, 1991). Key to this was allowing the players, not the instructors,
to define important concepts and set goals. The ‘simulation’ did little
more than provide a context. Similar exploratory approaches could eas-

ily be adopted in role-playing. Scenarios could be designed as detailed

situations to be explored rather than relying on the hero-quest for a
pattern.
These are not, of course, the only possibilities. They do, however,
indicate that alternative patterns to the hero-tale are possible, and that
these may prove more appropriate for a female audience.
Roles, Rules and Rewriting

Regardless of which underlying model is adopted, there is a real need to
move away from stories which revolve around combat and conquest. Un-
like boys, girls tend to lose interest in games for games’ sake at around
the age of twelve, so to gain women’s interest it is crucial to develop
alternative motivations.
An older and predominantly female audience will be less receptive

to gaming. To reach this audience, the designer should be primarily
concerned about the perceived practicality, relevance and accuracy of the
information. Fantasy, sports and war themes will receive little attention. It
is argued that gaming situations that are more issue- or socially-oriented
may have more appeal. (Baranich, 1992)
That women seem to avoid role-playing games because the playing of

roles is secondary to the simulated combat is perhaps the most ironic
aspect of the whole issue of games and gender. What this emphasizes,
though, is the need for a re-thinking of the way in which games are de-
signed. Combat and mechanics need to take second place to supporting
character development and interaction.
Problems with mechanics do not end here. Experience systems hark
back to the hero-quest structure of trial and reward, benefiting those
who kill the most or who successfully dominate a setting. Few systems
mention rewards for in-session character development, although some
do allocate token amounts for ‘good role-playing’. An alternative to this
needs to be found—perhaps forgoing character advancements in favour
of some kind of control over the narrative, or allocating advances and
penalties based on a discussion between players of what each character
‘gained’ during that session. However, since no direct parallels exist to
this problem, there is a need for investigation of the different possibili-
ties within the context of role-playing.
As mentioned earlier, one of the steps that needs to be taken is to
break away from clichéd archetypes and to move towards more realis-
tic characters. The rules system and background should be designed to
facilitate this. Enforcing rigid character classes should be avoided when-
ever possible.

Analysis
At the very least, designers of games should be cognizant of promoting

sex-stereotyping … Rather than increasing differences, the goal should
be to mediate them … [Stereotypical] role assignment does not help
either gender to enlarge their social capabilities. The realization that
both masculine and feminine traits are important and have a place in
society will help maintain the balance in the design of all games for all
audiences. (Baranich, 1992)
As with the alternative systems for experience and development, there

seems to be nothing which can be adopted directly from elsewhere. All
that is available are the recommendations of articles such as this, and a
small set of guidelines borrowed from computer game design:
As with other programs for females, scoring procedures should be
based on criteria other than ‘hit’ points alone. Realistic and practical
programs with more of a simulation approach will be more effective.
Games in this category might be centred around ‘real-life’ people and
situations and emphasize professional or social skills. (Baranich, 1992)
This is certainly not enough to use as sensible criteria for designers;
the need for further research into how to prioritize games is obvious.
Until this is done, attempts to create an appropriate system can be little
better than guesswork.
Crossing the Great Divide

As well as changing the characters, the structure, and the mechanics,
there is a need to change the players. As has been pointed out (Antunes,
1995), women and men use different styles of speech, women preferring
a ‘rapport’ to men’s ‘report’. This suggests that women might naturally
be better able to play ‘in character’ than men, since their preferences im-
ply a more interactive, dialogue-based style of play. Improved awareness
of this can only improve women’s enjoyment of the games. ‘Good read-
ers can become a hero of the other sex. Women, particularly, have had a
great deal of practice at it. But it is easier to read in one’s own language’
(Altmann, 1992).
The difference in styles is not restricted to speech. Baranich (1992)
cites several studies which describe the difference between male compet-
itive games and female co-operative play. Boys’ games tend to involve
threats or challenges, often in the context of some violent or fantastic
one-against-many situation. Girls, however, play games in which there
are no clear winners or losers—turn-taking games where you play until
caught ‘out’, for example. Interestingly, they also play non-threatening
role-playing games, such as ‘school’ or ‘house’. Inexperienced players,
instead of doing badly or being relegated to a minor position while they
learn the rules, are taken under the wing of a more experienced player.
The game’s development often revolves around teaching that person to

act and why they should do so. Provision for these qualities should be in-
corporated, if possible, into role-playing games, since the potential ben-
efits in terms of personal interaction are immense. Presently, emotional
attachment between characters is rare, which again harks back to the
pattern of the hero-tale. If inter-sexual relationships occur at all, it is
often as a reward—gaining a princess’s hand in marriage for defeating a
dragon, for example.
Continence; abstinence; denial of relationship. In the realm of male

power, there is no interdependence of men with women. Manhood,
according to Sigmund Freud, Robert Bly, and the hero-tale, is obtained
and validated by the man’s independence of women. The connection is
severed. The heroic man’s relation to women is limited to the artificial
code of chivalry, which involves the adoration of a woman-shaped object.
(Le Guin, 1993)
Care must be taken not to become patronizing, however. Female char-

acters are not necessarily seeking marriage, nor even men’s recognition.
These are ‘validation of one’s uniqueness and importance by being sin-
gled out among all other women by a man’, whereas ‘the quest of the
hero … is for self-recognition’ (Altmann, 1992). Here, as with charac-
ter formation, the use of disturbance, fresh role-models, or exploratory
growth by the player may prove useful. What must be avoided at all costs
is a reliance on stereotypes that return the female partner to being seen
merely as a male’s accessory.
Fantasy females have no limitations except those of the human

imagination. Her frequent depiction as a subordinate sex object is a
natural extension of boy/man’s dream—if boy/man can have a +1 sword
that talks, why can’t he have a +3 female that doesn’t? (Lidman, 1987).
Breaking the Circle or Breaking the Game?

In the course of this article, almost every aspect of role-playing has been
found wanting. Can games cope with this degree of change?
If anything can cope with such a challenge, it should be role-playing.
Computer games, for example, have turned to this genre for inspira-
tion when faced with similar problems (Baranich, 1992). Role-playing is
almost by definition a wonderful means of escaping any and all restric-
tions, and this is particularly true for fantastic settings.
Only science fiction and fantasy literature can show us women in entirely
new or strange surroundings. It can explore what we might become if
and when the present restrictions on our lives vanish, or show us new
problems and restrictions that might arise. It can show us the remarkable
woman as normal where past literature shows her as the exception

Analysis
(Sargeant, 1974).
Role-playing should be able, through this flexibility, to appeal to every-

one. The reason it doesn’t do so is simply that it is stuck in a rut. Making
the changes required to get back out again need not detract from play-
ers’ enjoyment, nor prove too difficult for designers to implement. Most
of the battle is already won if writers of scenarios can realize that heroic
struggles do not need to be external.
Quest stories are stories of winning selfhood and of claiming a world.

Through encounters with her own doubts, fears and desires, the hero
comes to a fuller understanding of her being in the world. The quest is
not a masculine exercise of force that involves putting on armour … The
quest of the female hero is likely to take a form somewhat different from
that of the male hero, although the underlying pattern and meaning
remain the same (Altmann, 1992).
This does not mean that we must altogether abandon the ‘male’ hero-
quest, or that no woman will ever enjoy a story founded on this pattern.
Its place in role-playing is guaranteed. But we must make room for the
alternatives as well. As a survey in Baranich (1992) showed, females of-
ten enjoyed computer games even more than males when the content
had no gender bias. The problem was that eight times as many games
were aimed at males than at females—the audience of the future had
been chosen, and it was to be the same audience as the past. A cursory
glance is enough to tell us that the same is true for role-playing games.
What is needed is enough variety to satisfy the entire potential audience,
and so open up role-playing to women.
We may have lost quest, contest, and conquest as the plot, sacrifice as
the key, victory or destruction as the ending; and the archetypes may
change. There may be old men who aren’t wise, witches who aren’t
wicked, mothers who don’t devour. There may be no public triumph of
good over evil, for in this new world what’s good or bad, important or
unimportant, hasn’t been decided yet, if ever. History is no longer about
great men. The important choices and decisions may be obscure ones,
not recognized or applauded by society (Le Guin, 1993).
It is high time that ‘women-friendly’ games were investigated. The cri-

teria they should embody—greater realism, less combat-oriented plots,
and more interaction—may prove a more meaningful and far-reaching
innovation than doing away with dice or introducing cards. They carry
with them the promise of better games for all players, male and female
alike. It is time role-playing was revisioned. It is time to break the circle.

Martin Oliver is currently researching ways to teach Modal Logic using graph-
ics. After role-playing for ten years, he began to wonder what wiomen did while
men rolled dice in gloomy rooms. After looking enviously at Childrens’ Literature
courses he decided that the topic of gender and role-playing could do with a little
serious attention. He plans to research this until either all the problems are solved
or he gets lynched as a troublemaker.
Anyone interested in developing a group to research gender and role-playing is

invited to write to Martin Oliver, IET, Open University, Walton Hall, Milton
Keynes, MK7 6AA. You can also email M.J.Oliver@Open.ac.uk.
Bibliography
Altmann, Anna; ‘Welding Brass Tits on the Armor: An Examination of
the Quest Metaphor in Robin McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown’,
Children’s Literature in Education, Vol. 23, No. 3, 1992.
Antunes, Sandy; ‘Leaping into Cross-Gender Role-Play’, Interactive Fan-
tasy 3, 1995.
Baranich, Karen; ‘The Role of Gender in the Design of Computer-Based
Training Games’, Simulation/Games for Learning, Vol. 22, No. 3, 1992.
Brooks, Alison; ‘A Monstrous Regiment’, White Dwarf 70, 1987.
Le Guin, Ursula; ‘Earthsea Revisioned’, Cambridge: Children’s Litera-
ture, with Green Bay Publications, 1993.
Lidman, Erica; ‘The Difference: The Female Persona in Roleplaying’,
White Dwarf 70, 1987.
Rilstone, Andrew; Editorial, Interactive Fantasy 3, 1995.
Robson, Jocelyn, & Collier, Kate; ‘Designing “sugar ’n’ spice”—an anti-
sexist simulation,’ Simulation/Games for Learning, Vol. 21, No. 3, 1991.
Sergeant, Pamela; ‘Women and Science Fiction’, Women of Wonder: Science
Fiction Stories by Women about Women, 1974.
Winston, Joe; ‘Revisioning the Fairy Tale Through Magic: Antonia Bar-
ber’s The Enchanter’s Daughter’ Children’s Literature in Education, Vol.
25, No.2, 1994.

Analysis
Horror: Motifs and

Actualities
If it’s got a vampire in it then it must be
horror... right? Phil Masters looks at the
various approaches role-playing games take
to scaring the living daylights out of us
This article is concerned with the treatment of ‘Horror’ in role-playing

games. It deals with a small number of specific examples which demon-
strate certain principles. Before moving on to these specifics, I would
like to propose a preliminary thesis; that ‘Horror’, as the term is used in
RPGs, has at least two different and quite distinct meanings:
1. The set of motifs and images associated with that body of fiction,
mostly in the gothic mode, which is usually called ‘horror’.
Examples of these motifs include vampires, other undead, were-
wolves, haunted houses, more or less gruesomely unpleasant things hap-
pening to characters, and characters experiencing intense fear. Since (I
suspect) the appearance of the work of H. P. Lovecraft, a further bundle
of tropes can be added to the list: invasions from outside time and space,
philosophical nihilism, despair and consequent insanity. (Insanity has
been a major feature of horror for far longer than that, of course, but
Lovecraft links it to his primary theme of existential terror.) This article
will refer to this approach as ‘Motif Horror’.
2. Actual stories, plots and scenarios that are scary, worrying and
horrifying.
In other words, that which leads to the players experiencing fear.
This approach will be termed, for convenience, ‘Emotional Horror’.
This difference is considerable—but it does not always seem to be
acknowledged. ‘Motif horror’ games usually declare that their aim is ac-
tually to scare players, and although they may sometimes succeed in
this, such games can go on for a long time without anyone experiencing

Horror: Motifs and Actualities by Phil Masters
much sense of terror. Conversely, games with very few supernatural or

gothic motifs can be ‘scary’. To the extent that players genuinely identify
with their characters—a situation which many games declare to be their
highest aim—any serious and prolonged threat to a character’s life and
well-being should be frightening. In practice, it is rare for games without
a declared ‘horror’ element to achieve this effect to any great extent,
which is hardly surprising; role-playing games are a form of entertain-
ment, with a substantial commercial element, and the creation of fear in
an audience without at least some minimal, tacit prior consent from that
audience, is likely to alienate the customers.
Role-playing games incorporated occasional elements of ‘Motif hor-
ror’ from very early on; some of the first lists of ‘monsters’ for the ear-
liest editions of TSR’s Dungeons & Dragons (1974 onwards) included
vampires, zombies, and flesh-dissolving blobs. But it was the appearance
of Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu (CoC) in 1981 that introduced the idea
that horror could be a game’s central theme. Call of Cthulhu is based on
H. P. Lovecraft’s work, of course, and to a considerable extent it strad-
dles the two definitions of horror. On the one hand, the game and the
scenarios published for it make diligent (and usually competent) efforts
to evoke an authentic air of fear, and mostly pay close attention to Love-
craft’s paranoid intellectual nihilism. However, because Lovecraft’s uni-
verse is so implacably uncaring, and his monsters are so inhuman and
powerful, the game simply could not function if the player-characters
confronted the main opposition directly with any great frequency. Thus,
in many scenarios, the Lovecraftian elements are pushed into the shad-
ows—becoming, in fact, background motifs.
Thus, CoC is often played as a thinking person’s game of life and
rather serious adventures in the 1920s and 1930s. The player-characters
are referred to as ‘Investigators’, and that is how they function. They
seek to determine both the nature of the threat they face and the correct
counter-measures to bring against it before they are actually obliged to
confront any horror. Some campaigns involve little fear and no super-
natural activity for weeks on end.
Early competitors for CoC, such as Pacesetter’s Chill (1984, subse-
quently re-published by Mayfair Games) and Stalking the Night Fantastic
(published in 1983 by Tri-Tac Inc.) focused heavily on the ‘motif ’ aspect
of horror, and were in fact mostly fairly tongue-in-cheek. The extreme
example of this trend was West End’s Hollywood-licensed Ghostbusters
(1986), a moderate success that acquired a number of passionate devo-
tees, but which belongs much more in the history of comedy games than
in this article.
Despite the appearance of some competent products such as GURPS
Horror (Steve Jackson Games, 1987) over the years, it is arguable that
no company really attempted an ‘emotional horror’ game to match CoC

Analysis
until quite recently. The ‘breakthrough’ was almost certainly the series of
linked games published by White Wolf starting with Vampire: the Masquer-
ade (1991). It could be argued that these introduce a third, new approach
to game horror, which might be termed ‘Romantic Horror’. Vampire
casts the player characters, not as opponents of the supernaturally hor-
rific, but as its embodiments. Nominally, in the game designers’ inten-
tion if not in typical play, they remain victims of the horrific elements
of the game-world. Their victories are defined not by any success in de-
feating monsters, but by the extent to which they come to terms with,
and even learn to use, their own monstrous natures. Subsequent games
in the series (including Werewolf: the Apocalypse and Mage: the Ascension)
make varying use of horrific motifs and situations, but tend to continue
with this theme. White Wolf appears to be most interested in the psy-
chology of the horrific, and makes relatively little attempt to frighten
players. Its products might be defined, according to taste, as either espe-
cially subtle games of emotional horror, or especially pretentious games
of motif horror.
They may also have inspired what seems to be a detectable move-
ment—an attempt to restore the ‘naked fear’ aspect of emotional hor-
ror to RPGs. The epitome of this would probably be Kult (originally a
Swedish game; the English translation was published by Metropolis in
1993). I am not closely familiar with this game, but it has been flippantly
defined as ‘Call of Cthulhu without the mindless optimism’; its central
theme is apparently a kind of paranoid Gnosticism1.
Horror Enemies and Horror Heroes: a case

study
Meanwhile, there have been a few brave attempts to explore alternative
forms and sub-categories of horror. One curious but admirable exam-
ple is GURPS Atomic Horror (Steve Jackson Games, 1993), which seeks
to shape a game-world out of the semi-horrific SF ‘B-Movies’ of 1950s
Hollywood. This theme may be simply a little too bizarre and quirkish
to catch on, and the horror element is, arguably, peripheral, but the sup-
plement’s attempts to take role-playing into some half-forgotten byways
of popular culture are, if nothing else, interesting. However, to complete
this article, I have chosen a slightly off-centre case study; some recent
products in the Hero System product line.
1 Gnostics regarded the material world as the intrinsically evil creation
of a flawed demiurge—’this is Hell, nor are we out of it’ so to speak—
whereas the atheist materialist Lovecraft simply regarded it as vastly
uncaring. Which would be worse in reality is probably a matter of taste;
which emerges, in game or story, as the more terrifying is, of course, a
function of the competence of the authors.

The Hero System started life as a superhero game (Champions; origi-

nally published by Hero Games in 1981; the ‘Hero’ line is now published
by Iron Crown Enterprises on the basis of a licence with Hero Games),
which remains the centrepiece of the line. The superhero genre is om-
nivorous (if unsubtle) in its assimilation of themes, so it is not surprising
to discover some horror motifs in Hero products. The supplement Hor-
ror Enemies (1993) is the epitome of motif horror in this context; aimed
squarely at the Champions market, it is in fact a game-oriented catalogue
of supervillains and suchlike, all of them derived from traditional ‘hor-
ror’ stories; they include vampires, werewolves, black magicians and in-
sidious monsters from space. They are, perhaps, more frightening than
the average Champions bad guy NPC (if only in that they are mostly un-
ambiguously willing to kill), but not by much. The book is also, it should
be said, a witty and varied collection of game ideas, and represents more
than enough justification for the use of motif horror in such games.
Conversely, its sister supplement Underworld Enemies (1993) barely
uses the word ‘horror’, but its contents are often somewhat disturbing.
It is largely based on the kind of modern superhero comics that feature
uncomfortable and even emotionally unstable heroes in conflict with
deadly—and definitely unstable—super-criminals. Thus it includes a
great deal of insanity and psychological horror. The book’s psychology
is no more subtle than that of its inspirations, having all the sensitiv-
ity to human motivations and mental states of a second-rate Hollywood
blockbuster. It adopts the primitive horror-fan’s assumption that insan-
ity is exactly equivalent to a talent for efficient, calculating mass-murder.
Its ‘insane’ characters are mad, and therefore they kill, but in matters
of self-preservation and long-term organization, they are thoroughly ef-
ficient.
Despite some moments of ingenuity, and one or two excellent char-
acter concepts, the book is also somewhat over-written and sometimes
downright silly, but this reader for one would call it more frightening
than Horror Enemies—if only in its paranoid view of American society.
But then, it is linked to Hero’s Dark Champions product line, which
is the most frightening thing this writer has seen in gaming for a long
time. Stripping the superhero genre of its naive idealism and simple
moral codes, Dark Champions reduces the basic concept to one of
crude, paranoid vigilante fantasy. Almost all the villains carry huge guns,
and the only things stopping them is an array of ruthless vigilantes, su-
perhuman only in their success rates, but carrying equally large firearms.
Most of the members of ethnic minorities depicted are one-dimensional
stereotypes. The ‘hero’ most frequently depicted in descriptions of the
game-world lacks even the basic limitations usual in otherwise similar
comics—a personal moral code, or simple human vulnerability. There is
also, thoughout the supplement, a blazing contempt for due process of

Analysis
law. Horror takes many forms.

Recognizing the success of the horror genre per se, Hero Games
has also produced a ‘genre book’ for the subject, called, simply, Horror
Hero (1994). This is an interesting but persistently flawed piece of work,
and in some ways illustrates all the traps into which horror games can
fall. Reasonably, given its function as a sourcebook for a ‘generic’ rules
system, it incorporates discussions of a number of horror sub-genres.
For some reason, a few paragraphs early in the book covering the same
ground as GURPS Atomic Horror are left undeveloped, but three set-
tings are given detailed treatment: nineteenth-century ‘Eldritch Horror’
(based on the most melodramatic of gothic tales); ‘Pulp Horror’, from
the first half of this century; and modern ‘Paranoid Horror’.
In other words, the book reviews a variety of motifs. However, horror
game authors frequently seem to feel that, if they fail to probe the depths
of truly emotional horror, they are failing to engage with their chosen
subject and this can lead, as in Horror Hero, to a tragi-comical degree
of over-writing. When this is combined with an amateurish, repetitive
prose style, the results are simply unfortunate. The worst of this is cred-
ited to a narrator figure:
It is horror that guards the knowledge of fear’s demise. And there are
many who benefit from fear and unknowing, from the street-scarred
mugger who surprises you on a darkened street, to the rulers of the
world …
But the game-background descriptions are little better:
Adventurers who inquire about Taxlan will soon find themselves slipping
beneath the surface of rationality into a twilight abyss of deranged
fantasy. Their only answer may be cold steel between the ribs or a set of
concrete galoshes.
And even plain explication of refereeing methodology can lapse into

mangled purple:
Describe the cold chills a PC feels in 90-degree weather that pass as

quickly as they come. Intimate the weird sensation that insects are paying
close attention to a particular PC …
As the history of horror fiction amply demonstrates, even the worst

prose stylists can sometimes come up with interesting plots or scenery,
and this supplement has some nice touches; for example, the ‘Eldritch’
campaign is based around a perverse and twisted Wild West setting that
is both unusual and potentially useful, while the ‘Pulp Era’ section is in-
teresting in its adaptation of Lovecraftian imagery into something that

catches the spirit of its inspiration without any encroachment in matters

of copyright.2
However, the authors appear to have just one idea for a horror cam-
paign structure; the PCs should be part of a small but valiant conspiracy
for good, which opposes a larger, world-wide association of ostentatious-
ly evil entities. The resulting over-emphasis on motifs culminates in the
‘Modern-Day’ setting. Paranoid horror is nothing if it lacks at least an
element of subtlety; this book introduces an international conspiracy of
werewolves and wereboars.
This article has not addressed a number of key questions about
horror role-playing; the greatest of these is, perhaps, the problem of
whether any game which achieves significant emotional identification
of the players with the protagonist PCs can ever allow itself the degree
of threat—the willingness to destroy (fictional) bodies and spirits—that
may be demanded of ‘true’ horror. That topic is left for another time.
But it is the source of the apparent tension between ‘Motif ’ and ‘Emo-
tion’ that, I would argue, dominates the history of horror role-playing.
The tension is problematic, but also—sometimes—profitable.
Phil Masters has written for a number of RPG magazines including Dragon,
Shadis and Pyramid. His first book-length publication was Kingdom of Champi-
ons for Hero Games, since when he has also worked for Steve Jackson Games and
Hogshead Publishing. He is currently waiting for editors at Steve Jackson Games
and Atlas Games to finish working over his creations, and is filling in the time as
a freelance programmer and technical writer.
2 An even more sophisticated accomplishment of this kind appears

in the earlier Hero System supplement, Champions in 3-D, published
in 1990. Allen Varney’s contribution to this book, ‘Horror World’, is
remarkable for its combination of non-Lovecraftian horror motifs, an
evocation of the authentic emotions of Lovecraftian horror, and the use
and subversion of conventions of superhero narrative.

Analysis
Role-Playing Defined
What is a role-playing game? Mark Frein
tries to come up with a definition that we
can all agree on
Whenever people sit down to critically address a fairly new topic, or at-
tempt to address it in fairly new ways, it can help to define the territory.
Aristotle did this for drama and poetry in his Poetics, as did Wordsworth
and Coleridge in their Preface to Lyrical Ballads. This short essay is cer-
tainly not as ambitious as the writings of these authors, but it will try
to clarify or suggest some boundaries for the discussion of the strange
thing we call role-playing.
We must acknowledge, however, that when we try to define role-
playing, we are making value judgements. Any characterization of role-
playing is bound to exclude some aspects of some role-players’ gaming.
Based on certain definitions of music and art, some critics were able to
label rock and roll as ‘not music’ and Impressionism as ‘not art’. There-
fore we should take care to draw soft boundaries around any characteri-
zation of role-playing and be more than willing to revise those bounda-
ries.
The simplest way to begin is to talk about those qualities which need
to be present for us to say that a role-playing game is occurring. We can
point to a book lying on a table and say, ‘That’s a role-playing game,’
but we would not say that role-playing is actually happening. Because
of this, role-playing seems to be a close cousin of drama. A role-playing
game, like a play, needs to be embodied and occurring through time.
This is not to diminish the visual, written and even auditory design of
role-playing products. Role-playing games certainly can consist of nu-
merous kinds of expressive media. But none of this is necessary for a
role-playing game to occur.
Could someone role-play alone? Yes, children (and adults) do it all
the time; all that is required is imagination. Could we call it a game?
Probably we could. Here is where our use of the words ‘role-playing’ and
‘game’ fail us. A child imagining she is a fire-fighter would be playing a

Role-Playing Defined by Mark Frein
role and could be making a kind of game out of it, yet when we see her
running around by herself making strange noises we, as role-players,
would not say she is doing the same thing we do. We might throw up
our hands at this point and decide we do not normally need such a
specific idea of what role-playing is. Yet confusion is evident. Non-role-
players often refer to all computer games as ‘role-playing’ games and
some game stores lump all boxed games into the role-playing category.
Instead of giving up, we will do what people have done for ages—come
up with a new, somewhat technical language to describe what it is we
role-playing gamers do.
‘Recreational interactive narrative’, seems like a good start. This new
term solves some problems and allows for self-indulgent pretension. For
recreational interactive narrative (RIN) to be occurring, we must be do-
ing it for purposes of enjoyment and be creating a story in the process.
The story must be created in the process of interaction, not simply acted
out (as in most dramatic pieces). We would distinguish RIN from ad-lib
drama or comedy in that it is recreational for those who are creating it,
not for a separate audience. Role-players are simultaneously audience,
participants and creators. The term ‘RIN’, however, is not a miracle
cure-all. There does not seem to be much room to distinguish Monopoly
or Risk from games such as Amber. Games such as Risk are recreational,
require more than one person and create a kind of narrative. In our
specific technicality, we have lost the role-playing element.
Let us try again at the drawing-board: and come up with the term
‘internally recreational and socially constructed narrative using imag-
ined agents’. We have at least two people creating a story for their own
enjoyment, but we also have the criterion that the agents which create
the story are fictional. Confusion about this last criterion can result in
accusations that role-playing is satanic. In a role-playing game it is not
the people who are making the story, but the imagined characters. Of
course, the role-players are the ones creating the discourse which leads
to the story, but the impetus of the story’s movement is the actions and
words of the imagined people. This may seem like a rather ridiculous
distinction. It is, however, an essential one. Every narrative needs agents
responding to events and other agents through time. It is not Mike, play-
ing Big Lug the warrior, who saves the day, but Big Lug himself. The
story is created by Big Lug’s deeds, not Mike’s. Role-players breathe life
into their characters just as writers or actors do. Even in live role-playing
it is the imagined persona and not the player who creates the narrative.
Under this heading fall all games sold on the market as role-playing
games, but not boardgames (because they do not involve imagined, per-
sonalized agents) and not single-player computer games (because the
narratives are not socially constructed). Of course, this is a fairly tra-
ditional and exclusive conception. Internally Recreational and Socially

Analysis
Constructed Narrative using Imagined Agents (IRSCNIA) is also a big

mouthful to describe a few people talking around a table. The advan-
tage, however, to all of this is that it establishes a territory for discussion.
We have a beginning vocabulary for criticizing recreational role-playing
on aesthetic grounds. Does it make a good story? Do all the participants
play a part in making the story? Are the agents well characterized?
We may even have a vocabulary for criticizing role-playing on ethical
grounds. Are the socially constructed images demeaning to those par-
ticipating? What kind of imaginative social setting is represented in a
role-playing product? We also have a disputable territory. The IRSCNIA
characterization may be attacked for excluding computer games, for
example. These kinds of questions and disputes can only increase the
integrity and understanding of role-playing games.
Mark Frein is currently a PhD student in Curriculum and Instruction at the

University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. His research interests in-
clude imagination in education and the teaching of literature. In the role-playing
industry, he has written for Skyrealms of Jorune and Over the Edge

How You Play the
Game
When people start playing to win, has
something gone wrong with the game?
Ben Chessel looks at co-operating and
competition in role-playing
Every now and then, my father used to poke his head into my role-play-
ing sessions and ask ‘Who’s winning?’ He became legendary in my gam-
ing circle for these interjections, and for his stubborn refusal to accept
our explanations that in role-playing games nobody won. Perhaps he
wasn’t interested, or perhaps he really didn’t believe in a game in which
there were no winners. What, after all, would be the point?
Since the assault of moralistic childhood television, our genera-
tion has received conflicting, incompatible messages about co-operation
and competition. I would regularly, on a Saturday morning, watch chil-
dren’s television programmes and then go off to play competitive sport
for my school or local club. I remember a particular Sesame Street sketch,
the moral of which was ‘co-operate’—or that through co-operation, dif-
ficult obstacles can be overcome and great things accomplished. School
sports, on the other hand, are founded on the principle that competi-
tion is healthy, a necessary ingredient of a normal upbringing. Parents
would shout from the sidelines, urging their child on to ever greater
feats of physical prowess, or berating the opposition for some unfair
or unsporting play. Such exploits were the stuff of my youth. It was not
only my Saturdays which were filled with conflicting messages about co-
operation and competition.
Games Without Winners

Games are understood by the wider community to be competitive en-
deavours. A game yields winners (or more often one winner) and los-

Analysis
ers. The best player is the most likely to win. For most people, victory
is the main purpose of a game. ‘Play to win’ is a cliché as well known as
‘shoot to kill’. Even counter-clichés like ‘It isn’t whether you win or lose,
but how you play the game’ only serve to reinforce the idea that games
are contests. Role-playing games, however, fall outside this definition
of games. There are no losers, and it is possible for everyone to win.
Indeed, it would be possible to argue that mutual victory is the aim of
role-playing games and gamers. Are we as gamers, therefore, some kind
of social revolutionaries?
The gaming community is hardly united or uniform enough to be
any kind of movement. I know many role-players who disagree with me
on almost every significant aspect of ethics, politics and morality. We
do agree on many aspects of role-playing games, however. Although we
play games in very different ways, our games are all co-operative, in-
volving a group of people who enhance each other’s shared experience,
rather than seek personal gratification at the expense of other players.
Co-operation sets role-playing apart, not only from other games but
from many other activities and even principles of modern life. The me-
dia, our politicians and the market all tell us that competition is good.
So are role-playing games merely an anachronistic hobby, destined to be
swept away by the wave of ‘strength through competition’ philosophy?
Or are role-playing games a small island of sanity, a forum in which it
can be shown that co-operation—people working together towards com-
mon objectives—is more rewarding than opposition and more produc-
tive than conflict?
What the Rulebooks Say

It’s well known that nobody actually reads the ‘What is a Role-Playing
Game?’ sections of rulebooks. However, these sections often contain in-
teresting discussions of the unique nature of role-playing as a co-opera-
tive endeavour. It is even possible to identify a kind of evolution of the
concept throughout role-playing’s short history.
On consulting the introduction to my first-edition Advanced Dungeons
& Dragons Player’s Handbook (now seriously in danger of falling apart), I
was able to find only one reference to co-operative role-playing:
By means of group co-operation and individual achievement, an

adventurer can become ever more powerful. Even death loses much
of its sting, for often the character can be resurrected … And should
that fail there is always the option to begin with a new character. Thus
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons… is open ended. There is no ‘winner’, no
final objective, and the campaign grows and changes as it matures (Gary
Gygax,1978).

How You Play The Game by Ben Chessel
Note the use of inverted commas to surround ‘winner’. This grammar

is common to many of these descriptions. Perhaps it is insignificant, but
maybe it represents a reluctance on the part of the designers to com-
pletely commit to the concept and alienate those new players who might
desire victory and defeat. Interestingly enough, the second edition of
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (by now with a firm hold on the market)
has a much larger discussion of this aspect of the game:
Everyone assumes that a game must have a beginning and an end, and
that the end comes when someone wins. That doesn’t apply to role-
playing games because no one ‘wins’ in role-playing games. The point
of playing is not to win but to have fun and socialize … Remember,
the point of an adventure is not to win but to have fun while working
together towards a common goal (David Cook, 1989).
The first edition of Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu was sold with Basic Role-
Playing: an Introductory Guide. This pamphlet contained a section enti-
tled, ‘Is it Fun?—Co-operation and Competition’:
But be warned: when a number of people get together co-operatively

… the joint effort results in an extremely satisfying experience for
all involved … Players must work together … There also needs to be
co-operation between players and the referee … The rewards of co-
operation are great; hostility and resentment are fatal to play (Greg
Stafford and Lynn Willis, 1981).
The next section is labelled ‘Winners and Losers’:
Uniquely and admirably, in FRP there are no winners and losers in the
normal competitive sense. Play is co-operative, wherein participants
work together for a common goal. The opponent is some alien or hostile
situation controlled by an impartial referee, not another player. Winning
in such a situation depends on whether or not the players succeed in
their goal. Losing is what happens if they fail. The only real losers are the
characters—not the players—who die in the attempt. Even then there is
satisfaction in dying gloriously …
Call of Cthulhu goes further than Advanced Dungeons and Dragons in ex-
plaining the nature of the game. Co-operation is stressed, and success
and failure are important concepts. Character death is seen as a measure
of failure. A player’s success is determined by their character’s achieve-
ment of its goals. Third-edition Call of Cthulhu reprints most of the above
comments with only one addition:
The death of a single investigator matters little if it means the repulsing

of part of Cthulhu’s master plan to enslave all Earth! … Since Call of

Analysis
Cthulhu has a high mortality rate, players are advised not to get too
attached to their characters (Sandy Peterson and Lynn Willis).
The concept of character sacrifice is introduced. It is clear that players

can succeed even if their characters die. The main measure of failure
however, is still character death.
By the time of the publication of fifth-edition Call of Cthulhu in 1993,
there have been some major additions and deletions to the text. The sec-
tion called ‘Winners and Losers’ has disappeared and been replaced by a
small paragraph at the end of the previous ‘Co-operation and Competi-
tion’ section (now called merely ‘Co-operation’):
If the investigators do exciting things stylishly and memorably, keeper

and players alike have won. Bad role-playing is the only real loss possible
(Sandy Peterson and Lynn Willis, 1993).
This is a completely different concept from the earlier explanations.

Players and referees can win, regardless of the outcome for their char-
acters. Competition, unless we consider it to be covered by ‘bad role-
playing’, is not even mentioned as a possibility.
Cyberpunk, both first and second edition, does not mention competi-
tion, winning or losing; neither does Middle-earth Role-playing or Skyrealms
of Jorune (first, second or third editions). There was perhaps a period in
the history of role-playing publication in which it was not considered
necessary to include detailed descriptions of what the games actually
were. Perhaps this reflects the fact that the only people buying the games
during this period were thought to be established gamers, and therefore
no detailed explanation of the nature of games was deemed necessary.
More recently, White Wolf has published the Storyteller series. First-
edition Vampire: the Masquerade opens with:
This is a game of make-believe, of pretend, of storytelling. Though a

game, it is more about storytelling than it is about winning (Mark
Rein•Hagen, 1991).
After a good deal of discussion about storytelling games as distinct from

other role-playing games comes a section headed ‘Winners and Losers’:
There is no single ‘winner’ of Vampire, since the object is not to defeat

the other players. To win at all, you need to co-operate with the other
players. Because this is a storytelling game, there is no way to claim
victory for yourself. In fact, it is a game where you are likely to lose, for
it is difficult to do anything to slow your character’s inexorable slide into
chaos … The only true measure of success in Vampire is surviving … If
the characters learn that a presumed serial killer is really a Vampire and
manage to halt her rampage, then they ‘win’. If they never even find out

just who was behind the murders … then they lose … In order to aid
victory, the characters must usually become friends (ibid).
The inverted commas, initially present in Advanced Dungeons & Drag-

ons, but absent from Call of Cthulhu, are back. Note also that ‘win’ is in
inverted commas but ‘lose’ is not. Once again it is hard to determine
the significance of such seemingly minute detail. Does it indicate the
desire on the part of White Wolf, which is targeting some new markets
with Vampire, not to alienate those who are used to a more conventional
game? Although White Wolf is very clear that the game is co-operative
and not competitive, there seems to be a return to the idea that winning
and losing the game is linked with character survival and achievement.
There is no suggestion that characters can fail while players win or suc-
ceed. The above discussion is almost unchanged in second-edition Vam-
pire: the Masquerade.
All of the above games seem anxious to argue that, although they
are not competitive, it is possible to win (often ‘win’). No game makes
the claim that winning and losing are irrelevant to role-playing games,
though many say that other considerations are more important. It is in-
teresting to see which games place particular emphasis on the ideas and
which do not, and to compare those observations to the kind of games
which are played using those systems, and the kind of people who play
them.
The Referee as an Opponent?

In my early years of gaming, I remember competition between referee
and players. The referee would be out to get the players, almost as a
matter of course. Referees would acquire a reputation for being harsh
or soft. There was a feeling that their responsibility was to make things
as difficult as possible for the characters. This kind of thinking is an
extension of the idea that role-playing games are won by players whose
characters achieve their goals, and lost by those whose characters fail or
die. We have seen the first-edition Call of Cthulhu rules which state: ‘The
opponent is some alien or hostile situation controlled by an impartial
referee, not another player.’ It is an obvious extension, but I think an
illogical one, to cast the referee as the opponent, and not as impartial.
The original Basic Role-Playing says:
It is the referee’s duty to make the opposition smart and mean, or there
will be little challenge for the players, and they will be bored. But the
referee must refrain from arbitrary decisions even though the players
out-fight, out-wit, or out-guess him in the end.
This passage could be taken to imply that there is competition between

Analysis
referee and players. The advice on running Cyberpunk contains sec-

tions which could be interpreted as encouraging the same thing:
You should not be afraid to kill off characters … This doesn’t mean you
shouldn’t play fair. But you should always play for keeps. If they can’t
handle the pressure they shouldn’t be playing Cyberpunk. Send them
back to that nice role-playing game with the happy elves and the singing
birds (Mike Pondsmith et al, 1990).
These examples do not necessarily sanction conflict between the referee

and the player but it is possible to interpret them that way. In my experi-
ence, most role-players view the entire game as a co-operative contract
between players and referees.
Rivalry Between Players; Rivalry Between

Characters
Every role-player has played in a game where rivalry or animosity be-
tween players has got out of hand. Often these conflicts come to blows
(hopefully in character) and the entire game usually suffers as a result.
There is little more damaging to a campaign than a violent or fatal en-
counter between two characters resulting in lasting bad feeling between
players. However, a well-staged feud between characters which has no
manifestation in the relationship between the players can enhance the
dynamics of a group. Conflict between players is, in my experience, uni-
versally bad. Real competition has no place in role-playing games. Other
games—war games, board games, multi-user dungeons and other com-
puter games—provide this kind of thing if that is what players desire.
Recently, however, White Wolf has produced what might be considered
an exception.
Wraith and the Shadowguide

The fourth part of the Storyteller series, Wraith: the Oblivion, includes a
clever concept—the Shadow. This is a character’s dark side, and is por-
trayed by another player. This other player, or Shadowguide, attempts
to lure, coerce or trick the original character into acts of self-destruction.
This idea does not represent competitive role-playing in any real sense.
There is no benefit to the Shadowguide for successful damnation of the
other character, nor any real penalty in failure to do so, except in so
much as the other character’s Shadow is the Shadowguide’s character.
It is, however, worth looking at in passing. In the Shadow section of the
rules, it is stated:

Another player … assumes the role of the character’s Shadow. This

player is called the Shadowguide … each Wraith player actually controls
two characters: her own character and another character’s Shadow …
trying to trick the player into self-destructive actions … Any role-playing
game is played by consensus … As a Shadowguide … you must know
when to stop … when to cease your spiritual assault on your poor target
… you are playing an intelligent entity who realizes that small victories
… are worth more than a single triumph … It’s only a game (Mark
Rein•Hagen, 1994).
Clearly this idea, which has the potential to produce intense and reward-
ing role-playing, does in some way represent competitive role-playing
between players. It does not significantly affect my views on competition
in role-playing, however.
Typically, role-playing is a completely co-operative enterprise in-
volving a complex interaction between the imaginations of players and
referee. A kind of consensus reality is created in which, and through
which, rich and enduring tales are told. The rewards of such gaming are
very different from the rewards of victory in a conventional game. They
are, I would argue, more satisfying and enduring. Furthermore, they
are available to all participants, and there is little chance that players
will feel sour, cheated or defeated after playing role-playing games. In a
conventional game one is more likely to win, or at least to have a satisfy-
ing experience when playing with people of similar or inferior skill than
one’s own. In role-playing games it is possible to enjoy collaborations
with players of any experience, but often the best games are had by the
least experienced player in the group.
Goals
If role-playing has no one victor, then what are its goals? Should we look
at role-playing as a game which has joint goals, and joint victories, or
one which has no winning or losing at all? It is important to make the
distinction between goals, or victory, in and out of character. It is pos-
sible, and perhaps common, for characters to fail. They don’t always
achieve what they set out to achieve; role-playing would be boring if
they did. Players, however, can always reap the rewards of role-playing,
whether their characters succeed or fail.
Undoubtedly, it feels good to claim victory for a character at the con-
clusion of a long series of adventures; to finally run the villain through,
uncover the murderer, regain one’s lost dignity, or whatever. There is a
different kind of satisfaction in playing the poignant death scene of a
loved character, to enshrine that character in the memories of yourself
and the other players. In the same way that role-playing gamers can
experience danger, magic or violence not normally accessible to players

Analysis
through the exploits of their characters, a player can experience and

find rewards in the failure or loss of a character. I would argue that con-
cepts of winning and losing, and therefore competition in the real sense,
are irrelevant to role-playing games.
Convention Games
It would be impossible to write an article about competition and role-
playing without addressing the notion of role-playing conventions. Most
conventions involve a large amount of competitive role-playing. In Aus-
tralia at least, trophies are awarded to the best teams, both in terms of
success in the adventure and skill in characterization. In some ways, the
very fact that the kind of role-playing which is done at conventions is so
different to normal role-playing, proves the point of this article. Con-
vention role-playing is firstly a chance for lots of gamers to congregate
and play games with people they don’t normally come into contact with.
They are a chance for designers and companies to show off their skills
and products. The competitive aspect is justified by convention organ-
izers as a chance for good role-players to be rewarded for their time
and effort. While this may be true, role-playing is its own reward, other-
wise none of us would do it, and perhaps it would be better if conven-
tions were not competitive events. The hobby of role-playing is resilient
enough, however, to absorb this small amount of competition and re-
main relatively unaffected.
I have resisted the temptation to make political assertions in the
course of this article. Whilst I believe that a ‘competition is good’ phi-
losophy is damaging and alienating to those who live under govern-
ments that preach it, I have limited my comments to role-playing games.
I believe that these games which we play, whenever we can find the time,
have something to teach the rest of society. We find enrichment and en-
joyment through a co-operative experience in which there are no losers,
and if there are winners, then they are all of us who play. Role-playing
games should publicize this strength more, and reveal to their critics,
and those who are entirely ignorant of them, that there is more creativity
and vitality to be had through co-operative imagination, than through
any form of competition or conflict.
Ben Chessell is the co-author of Rage Across Australia and Dark Reflections:
Spectres for White Wolf Games and the forthcoming Serpent Moon for Chaosium.
He has aspirations to finishing his university degree. He has a passion for study-
ing history which does not extend to the completion of essays. He has been playing
and writing role-playing games for ever.

Design
In this new section we turn
our attention to the process of
creating new and original game
systems. We ask experienced
games designers to tell us how
they transform vague concepts
into finished products; to
explore the nuts-and-bolts of
devising new rules systems and
imaginary worlds; and to share
with us some of the problems
they have encountered along
the way
Everway: Designer’s
Notes
Jonathan Tweet discusses some of the whys
and wherefores of his latest role-playing
game
Melissa wanted to be a princess, a beautiful princess. We, an all-guy

group, were playing a fantasy/SF/post-holocaust game. Melissa was join-
ing us for the first time. She was—can you guess?—the girlfriend of one
of the players. We were mutated, magic-wielding, ass-kicking mercenar-
ies in a ruined world. And Melissa wanted to be a beautiful princess.
Insert awkward pause here.
This home-brew game, you see, had statistics for strength, hit points,
damage bonuses, and magical power. But looks? Status? The referee
hadn’t bothered to include rules for those. It would have been unfair for
Melissa to play a beautiful princess because her character would have
advantages (good looks and status) that she hadn’t got by rolling dice.
In an effort to make her happy, we suggested she play a sorceress, about
the closest thing to a princess that fitted the rules.
She played, she left, she never returned.
I designed Everway with Melissa in mind. Everway uses freeform
character generation so that you can play an ass-kicking mercenary or
a beautiful princess. More to the point, you can play characters that I
never would have thought of. You’re limited by your imagination, not
by mine.
But freeform character creation isn’t a cure-all, as I learned when
demonstrating my previous RPG, Over the Edge. It also has a freeform
system for making characters. At a small convention, a young woman
with very little experience of RPGs joined the demonstration game, with
a crew of experienced gamers. I was excited to get her in on the game
because I wanted to show her how easy and fun RPGs can be. ‘You can

Everway Designer’s Notes by JonathanTweet
play any sort of character you want,’ I told her. She asked me what I
meant, and I told her that there were no character classes or races, just
her imagination to guide her. She walked away. She thought it would be
too hard to make a character up from whole cloth.
I designed Everway with her in mind, too. Instead of pulling your
character out of your head, you base it on five ‘vision cards’, which you
interpret however you want. With images to anchor their imaginations,
players often find they develop characters they’d never have been able
to dream up in a vacuum.
But even the images aren’t enough. There’s Sue, who played Over the
Edge and never had a problem inventing characters. (Her first character
was the Dalai Lama accidentally reincarnated into the body of an Ameri-
can woman.) She had a problem, however, with the dice. Now, OTE is
about as minimalist as a diced game gets. You roll a few dice, add them
together, and try to beat your opponent’s roll or some difficulty number
that the referee sets. Easy. But she’d roll her four six-siders, I’d say, ‘What
did you get?’ and she’d freeze, staring at the little white pips on the faces
of the dice. Everyone at the table would look at her, waiting. I bet she was
flashing back to math class.
I designed Everway with Sue in mind. No dice. Symbolic cards, called
‘fortune cards’, guide play. Instead of providing a dichotomous succeed/
fail result, or even a linear critical/success/failure/botch result, the cards
suggest conditions or circumstances that the referee intuitively blends
into the action.
The point of Everway is to make role-playing easier and more attrac-
tive. If it succeeds, we’ll see people playing Everway (and soon playing
other RPGs) who have never role-played before. Some of these people
will be the friends, lovers and family members of current gamers. Others
will be entirely new groups discovering role-playing on their own.
Of course, a ‘beginners’ game’ is nothing new. Other companies, es-
pecially TSR, have been releasing beginners’ games for years. Generally,
however, the strategy other designers have taken is to strip the game
of role-playing and to leave the fantasy and adventure elements intact.
Dungeon, HeroQuest, DragonStrike, and DragonQuest let you ‘play’ a ‘char-
acter’, but these are boardgames that share elements with fantasy RPGs.
Some of these are good games, but they’re not RPGs. I believe in role-
playing, and I wanted to design a role-playing game. In fact, Everway is
not a beginner’s game, as such. It is suitable for beginners, but because it
centres on creativity, it can appeal to veteran gamers as well.
How It Works
Everway uses two types of cards for two basic purposes: vision cards for
creating heroes, and fortune cards for resolving actions. These cards

Design
are at the heart of what makes

Everway different from other
RPGs. While they both spur
the imagination with imagery,
they’re very different from each
other.
Vision cards depict scenes
from various worlds, lands, and
cultures. Scenes include a well-
dressed man with a falcon, an
old man sleeping under a tree,
a woman carrying a child on
her shoulders, a lion-headed
warrior about to draw a sword,
and a satyr playing a flute.
These scenes include men and
women from a variety of cul-
tures and ethnic backgrounds.
To create a ‘hero’ (player
character), the first thing you
do is choose five vision cards. You then invent a hero based on these
images, which may represent the hero and the hero’s past, present, fu-
ture, friends, enemies, family, hopes, fears, or whatever else you wish.
The heroes are ‘spherewalkers’, exceptional people capable of travelling
through gates to different worlds.
The hero develops further during a question-and-answer session in
which the players ask each other questions about the heroes. Often, play-
ers ask questions about details on the vision cards. Through this process,
the hero’s background evolves from a rough outline to a detailed history.
The point of these vision cards and this process of creating a hero is
to give players complete control while at the same time getting them to
play heroes they would be unlikely to develop on their own. The stimu-
lus of the cards and the questions helps you invent a hero whose details
often surprise you. Fans of diced character generation systems often say
that the dice encourage players to play new kinds of characters, those
they wouldn’t play if they chose their characters’ attributes. The image
and question system in Everway allows the same thing, but without the
random element.
The Fortune Deck consists of 36 cards, each with an image, a title,
and two meanings. One meaning, written upright at the bottom of the
card, represents the card’s basic meaning. The other meaning, generally
an opposite of the first, is written upside down at the top of the card. It
represents the card’s meaning when it is reversed (upside down). For ex-
ample, the King card bears the image of a king on a throne. Its upright

meaning is ‘Authority’, and its reversed meaning is ‘Tyranny’.

During play, the referee uses the Fortune Deck to resolve actions
rather as dice might be used in a typical role-playing game. The referee
determines the likely outcome of a conflict and then draws a card to
modify the result. On the most basic level, cards are ‘good’, ‘bad’, or
‘neutral’, but they also provide non-linear results. For example, if the
heroes are chasing enemies that are faster than they are, a draw of the
Priestess (‘Understanding Mysteries’) is not good enough for them to
catch the enemies. It’s a good card, but it’s not tied to action or energy,
so it’s not good enough to help the heroes prevail against the odds at a
physical test. But the referee, prodded by the meaning of the card, may
invent a clue for the heroes to find, perhaps a brooch or weapon that a
fleeing enemy dropped in haste. Thus the heroes get a positive result
even though it’s not the positive result they had hoped for.
A typical referee uses the Fortune Deck less often than one would use
dice in most diced RPGs. Generally, a draw rules a general action, such
as a battle with an opponent, rather than a specific manoeuvre, such as
a swing of the sword. How often one uses the Fortune Deck is a question
of style, not rules. For instance, a referee may draw a single card to de-
termine how all the heroes do in a battle, while another might prefer to
draw one card for each hero.
The point of the Fortune Deck is to bring unpredictable, but not
entirely random, stimulus into the referee’s decisions. It also does away
with maths. On a more aesthetic level, however, the deck creates a link
between the real world and the game world. The characters in the worlds
of Everway know about the Fortune Deck and use it for divination. Using
it in the real world provides a link that helps make the fantasy experi-
ence more complete.
The Fortune Deck has more uses than as a ‘randomizer’ to resolve
actions. As a player, you select three fortune cards tied to your hero: a
virtue, a fault, and a fate. Your hero’s virtue represents some talent, gift,
blessing or strength; and the fault represents a weakness, curse or failing.
The fate represents the challenge or test that the hero must meet in or-
der to progress personally or spiritually. Thus the deck, which represents
the forces of the entire universe, is also directly a part of the individual
hero’s life. In a similar way, the referee can use the cards to determine
(randomly or intentionally) the virtue, fault and fate of a newly invented
realm or to determine the basic conflict for a quest.
How It Will Develop

The double goal of appealing to the established game market and draw-
ing in new people determines the sort of support we plan for Everway.
By the end of the year we’ll have four sorts of support products available,

Design
and they’ll set the directions

that later products will follow.
These products have been part
of the overall vision of Everway
from the start.
First we’ll release a stand-
alone, over-size Fortune Deck.
While referees and players may
want to take cards from regu-
lar Fortune Decks to represent
the virtues, faults, and fates of
their heroes and realms, the
over-size version will make it
easy for referees and players to
have whole decks for use dur-
ing play.
Next will come Spherewalk-
ers, which consists of a set of
trading cards and a book of
background information. Together, the cards and the book describe the
world of Everway, especially the creatures, legends, items and people
that heroes may encounter on their travels among the spheres. Sphere-
walkers is designed to make role-playing more attractive and accessible to
card fans as well as to provide more background to please role-players,
who often judge games based on their settings.
This fall we’ll release a book of ready-to-run quests (or adventures).
Since we intend to attract beginners to role-playing, we need to provide
them with some examples of how quests work beyond the ready-to-run
quest in the game set. The book will come with cards to represent scenes
in the quests.
Finally this year we’ll release a set of vision cards, similar to those
found in the game set. While the Spherewalker cards will depict specific
scenes, the vision cards will raise questions rather than provide data.
Together, these products will make the line accessible to beginners,
experienced gamers, fantasy fans and card collectors. If the strategy
works, Everway will be an entrance for many new people into the role-
playing hobby. Personally, I’d love to see experienced gamers use it to
introduce beginners to role-playing, whether these beginners quickly
move on to other RPGs or not.
Questions About Everway

Q: Why might the Everway system be better at producing a range of dif-
ferent characters than other freeform systems such as, say, Ghostbusters?

A: When I designed Over the Edge, one design consideration was that
the player would not need to know much, if anything, about the setting.
With this advantage, it could use a freeform character generation system
very well and very easily. The OTE characters I hear about continue to
amuse and delight me. Freeform systems other than Everway certainly
work well.
Everway likewise requires little or no knowledge on the part of the
player. The true beauty of Everway’s system, however, is that the vision
cards and the question-and-answer session inspire players to develop
heroes that they wouldn’t come up with from dreaming up characters on
their own. Playing Everway, one routinely sees players surprised at the
details they come up with about their own characters. These surprises
help make the characters richer and more life-like.
Q: Why do you think Everway will succeed as an entry-level game
when games such as Prince Valiant failed?
A: First, the art will be a big part of whatever success Everway enjoys.
It’s simply more sensually pleasant to play Everway than it is to play,
for example, Prince Valiant. Plenty of current RPGers don’t consider the
visual element of a game that important to enjoyable play. Why is that?
Partly because people who strongly value visuals are less likely to enjoy
most current RPGs, which are primarily verbal. Non-role-players are
more likely to value the visual elements of Everway.
Second, Everway is more likely to say ‘Yes’ to a beginner’s ideas and
Prince Valiant (or Ghostbusters or DragonQuest) is more likely to say, ‘No’.
Yes, you can be a suit of plate armour inhabited by the ghost of a fallen
warrior. Yes, you can be a gob-
lin that can grow and shrink at
will. Yes, you can be a beauti-
ful princess. The real world is
full of a lot of people who are
happy to tell you ‘No’. Fantasy
should be a place where you’re
more likely to hear ‘Yes’.
Q: Are ‘vision cards’ going
to make conventional role-
players run away from the
game screaming that ‘Magic:
the Gathering is taking over!’?
A: I haven’t seen it happen,
but it’s bound to. Anything
popular creates a vocal minori-
ty that opposes it. We can clear-
ly see that with Dungeons &
Dragons and with Magic. There

Design
will be gamers who will oppose

Everway for legitimate reasons,
and there will be those who will
oppose it because they don’t
like Magic. Long live diversity!
Q: Why did you adopt a
mythical/symbolic/fairy-tale
setting rather than a more con-
ventional fantasy world?
A: Myths, symbols, and
fairy-tales are about meaning:
love, morality, fear, family, com-
munity, maybe even enlighten-
ment. Good stories are about
the same things. Everway uses
images and symbols to draw
players and referees into story-
telling mode. Everway doesn’t
simulate Newtonian physics. It
encourages story-telling.
Q: Everway is Alter Ego’s first game directed at people who haven’t
role-played before, rather than at the established market. Isn’t there a
danger that this direction will alienate the current gaming hobby, or
cause the games to lose exactly those elements that made them popular?
A: This point comes across with difficulty, so let me repeat it: Everway
is not aimed at new players instead of at the established market. It is
aimed at both the established market and newcomers. Even so, the ques-
tion is a fair one. In order to appeal to new players, will Alter Ego games
lose the elements that make role-players such a devoted community?
The answer to that question takes some thought.
First of all, yes, there are elements of traditional role-playing games
that Everway lacks. For example, some players relish developing char-
acters within a context that a game’s setting provides. The same goes
for referees and their adventures. This appeal accounts for the lasting
popularity of, for instance, Tekumel, Glorantha and Jorune. As we expand
the Everway line, we’ll include settings that players and referee can use
in this way, but that’s not what the game is about.
Other players enjoy the intricate play of numbers and the gritty real-
ism that some games offer. Everway offers no critical hit charts, no skill
interaction rules, no +4 bonuses for blindsiding your target. This style
of tactically oriented play is one of the things sacrificed in order to orient
the game toward story-telling.
But for most players, what they want are engaging characters and
dramatic action. Defined settings and tactical rules are means to these

ends. I’m betting that for most players’ tastes, Everway offers both en-
gaging characters and dramatic action without the pre-defined setting
and without the numbers. That’s why I see Everway appealing to experi-
enced players as well as to beginners.
If Everway succeeds, I’d like to see other companies accept the chal-
lenge of developing engaging games that appeal both to newcomers
and to experienced gamers. A range of games from different companies,
all accessible to the beginner, could mean an increase in the size of the
hobby and a healthier industry. And even in such an industry, RPGs that
are not accessible to newcomers would flourish. In fact, I’d hope that the
increased number of players would mean that specialized games with
limited appeal would do even better because they would have a bigger
pool from which to draw. A few years after they first play Everway, plenty
of players will move on to games that assume a familiarity with the hob-
by. If Everway succeeds, I see it as a boon to more traditional RPGs, not
their doom.
Art by Scott Kirschener, Janine Johnston, Martin McKenna and Doug Alexander.
In 1987 Jonathan Tweet and Mark Rein•Hagen wrote and published Ars Mag-
ica, which won the Gamer’s Choice Award for best fantasy role-playing game of
1987. In 1992 he wrote Over the Edge, published by Atlas Games. In 1994, he
and John Nephew designed On the Edge, a trading card game based on Over the
Edge. Later that year he joined Wizards of the Coast where he co-ordinates the
Alter Ego Design Group, whose mission is to produce games that appeal both to
experienced gamers and to non-role-players.

Design
Self-Censorship
When you are writing a game for
publication, are there some things best left
unsaid? Lee Gold discusses the material
that was left out of some of her role-playing
books, and why it was excluded.
No editor or publisher has ever given me any explicit instructions to
censor any elements from any one of my games or sourcebooks. I got the
idea all on my own that Fantasy Games Unlimited, Steve Jackson Games
and Iron Crown Enterprises (I.C.E.) didn’t want my Japanese and Vi-
king sourcebooks to include even a few paragraphs about Japanese or
Norse attitudes towards homosexuality. So, even though my researches
indicated that this was a significant aspect of their culture, I didn’t touch
it in my books.
It wasn’t that I was unwilling to disagree with my publishers. My
Vikings sourcebook for I.C.E. occasioned a long, though friendly, argu-
ment with my editor about Viking attacks on castles. My source material
seemed to agree that Vikings had been unwilling to assault even a mini-
mal motte and bailey castle, let alone more elaborate fortifications. The
editor wanted material on such attacks to be included. We eventually
compromised on the statement: ‘the raiders would ride inland, pillag-
ing but steering clear of castles and other fortified areas … However, a
few adventurous Vikings relished the challenge of storming a motte and
bailey castle …’
Eventually it occurred to me to wonder whether I’d been wrong to
ignore cultural attitudes towards homosexuality. So when I next spoke
to the management people at my various publishers, I asked them.
They said they were very glad I hadn’t included the material, and—
yes, indeed—if I had, it would have been deleted. RPG publishers don’t
boggle at gaming material featuring amoral bloodshed, torture, drug
addiction, vampires, succubi (all strictly heterosexual, in every piece of
artwork I’ve seen) and even demons—but homosexuality seems to be
beyond the pale.
Self-Censorship by Lee Gold
Of course, this doesn’t apply to all RPG publishers. For example,

when White Wolf asked me to write a piece on modern Oriental vam-
pires (included in its World Of Darkness), I prefaced the rules and cul-
tural background with a story in which an American tourist (from San
Francisco) has erotic encounters with a male gaki (vampire) and a female
shape-changing cat. The piece was narrated in the first person, and my
accompanying note begged that if it were illustrated, the artist leave the
character’s sex undefined so readers would be left uncertain about which
encounter had been same-sex.
I’d read White Wolf ’s Vampire: the Masquerade rulebooks and figured
the company wouldn’t mind—and it didn’t. The rest of my piece didn’t
mention changing attitudes towards homosexuality over Japanese his-
tory, although this would undoubtedly show up in vampire society, which
is immortal and drawn from many different generations.
Even though all this has been self-censorship—based on (appar-
ently accurate) perceptions of publishers’ attitudes, it’s beginning to get
frustrating. In this article, I want to discuss how medieval Japanese and
Norse attitudes towards homosexuality might affect role-playing games
set in those cultures.
Homosexuality in Medieval Japan

I haven’t encountered any material documenting, or even alluding to,
lesbianism in medieval Japan. Ivan Morris notes in The World of the Shin-
ing Prince, his sourcebook on the ninth-century Heian period:
Homosexual relations among the court ladies were probably quite

common as in any society where women are obliged to live in continuous
and close proximity … but … I have found no specific evidence.
Of course, the court ladies’ ‘continuous and close proximity’ was tem-
pered by frequent visits from the court men. Morris notes that:
A maid-of-honour or a lady in the Office of the Empress’s Household

would usually have a ‘chief lover’ who, theoretically at least, had a prior
claim to her attention. In addition, if she was sufficiently attractive and
enterprising, she might have a secondary lover and numerous casual
lovers …
Of course court society isn’t the Japanese setting most role-playing gam-
ers are interested in. They want to put their characters into a culture
dominated by samurai and ronin, not courtiers. They are not interested
in ninth-century Heian (Peace and Tranquility) but in sixteenth-century
Sengoku (Warring Provinces) before the rise of the Tokugawa Shogunate,

Design
or perhaps nineteenth-century Late Tokugawa during the waning of the

Shogunate’s authority. At least, those were the two eras that my book
GURPS: Japan focused on, with the approval of Steve Jackson Games.
Samurai-era Japan tolerated male homosexuality and, in fact, insti-
tutionalized it in certain cultural areas: among ‘salesboy’ prostitutes, ka-
buki actors, Buddhist monks and the samurai warriors themselves.
Boy Prostitutes
This group is treated at length in Oliver Statler’s classic Japanese Inn, in
which he quotes the writings of Englebert Kaempfer, a doctor employed
by the Dutch East India Company, who lived in Japan 1690-1692:
At Seikenji they make a famous plaister [salve] … On the chief street of

this town, thro which we pass’d, were built nine or ten neat houses, or
booths, before each of which sate one, two or three young boys, of ten or
twelve years of age, well dress’d, with their faces painted and feminine
gestures, kept by their lew’d and cruel masters for the secret pleasure and
entertainment of rich travellers, the Japanese being very much addicted
to this vice. However, to save the outward appearances … they sit there,
as it were, to sell the above said plaister to travellers.
Seventeenth century-novelist Saikaku Ihara’s The Life of an Amorous Man

describes itinerant ‘salesboy’ prostitutes, tobiko:
Womanish youths who called at rich widowers’ estates or made the rounds
of poor sections where country samurai lived. They might peddle other
dainty goods besides perfume, but … their trade was a screen to hide
their true identities from the unknowing. They followed a set pattern
of conduct and a line of talk easily recognizable to men acquainted with
their secrets: men who felt no attractions in real women.
GURPS: Japan devoted a number of paragraphs to Japanese prostitutes,

whom I politely called courtesans. A sidebar explained how girls were
brought up as courtesans, how much money a family might get for sell-
ing their daughter to a ‘tea-house’, how much money a courtesan might
make for her manager and herself, and how much it would cost a lover
to buy her contract. I even introduced a new Disadvantage: ‘Love for
Courtesan or Geisha’, a financially and socially destructive compulsion.
I didn’t mention boy prostitutes at all. I should have explained that
both boys and girls were sold as children by their families: peasants bank-
rupted by a drought who needed to pay their taxes, or city artisans or
sales clerks who’d staked their children at dice games. Sometimes even
a child of a respectable samurai family might be sold to raise money, if
the family honour was somehow at stake. Again like girls, the boy prosti-

tutes would turn over a significant percentage of their earnings to their

managers (in exchange for their room and board, plus their expensive
clothes and cosmetics). Courtesans typically retired in their mid-thirties;
boy prostitutes retired in their late teens, when they’d reached physical
maturity. Very beautiful courtesans were treated as social celebrities and
had the right to accept or reject would-be clients, but boy prostitutes
don’t seem to have ever acquired this sort of status.
My Japanese role-playing campaign has been running for over ten
years of real time. Some years ago, one player character bought a fifteen-
year-old peasant girl as his concubine. Her family had been sentenced
to be crucified because her father had been rude enough to submit a
petition asking their lord to lower taxes after a year of drought. Her
only chance of escape from death was to legally change the family unit
in which she was registered by becoming a wife, concubine or prostitute.
I’ve never made prostitutes, male or female, part of my campaign
plot-lines, and the player characters have never sought them out. On
occasion, they’ve sought out actors, gamblers, and shape-changing ani-
mals. One player character even wandered the wilderness crying, ‘De-
mon! Hey, demon! I want to sell my soul to you!’ I think my players just
aren’t very interested in prostitutes.
There are a number of plot-lines involving boy prostitutes that I
might have used. There’s the samurai boy who was sold in order to sup-
port his widowed mother—and who is looking for his father’s murderer.
In one variant, the object of the vendetta would turn out to be the man
he’s fallen in love with. There’s the boy whose demands for expensive
gifts have driven his lover to a life of crime. There’s the boy who’s really a
shape-changing fox or badger, who’s sold himself in order to raise mon-
ey for an impoverished samurai or Buddhist priest he admires. There’s
the boy who’s fallen in love with a handsome customer and is wasting
away for love of him, his ikiryo (living ghost) haunting his lover.
In GURPS: Japan I wrote: ‘Devout Buddhist priests are strict celi-
bates.’ I didn’t mention that most Buddhist priests were less devout and
interpreted their vows to forswear sex as only forbidding them from hav-
ing sex with women. I wrote that some Buddhist priests were wanderers
while others lived in temples which functioned, among other things, as
schools. I didn’t write that some temples institutionalized homosexual
treatment of the children entrusted to them as students.
Louis Frederick’s Daily Life in Japan, records:
The nobles often entrusted their [male] children, from their earliest years,
to the care of the monasteries; there the monks undertook to educate
and instruct them until they reached their majority. These children were
cherished by the monks and priests, to whom they served as pages. Their
clothes were sumptuous, they had their eyebrows shaved [as upper-class
women did] and were made up like women. They were the pride of the

Design
monasteries which often boasted of possessing the prettiest and most

talented pages in the district … Some, on their majority, became monks;
others returned to their families.
Charles J. Dunn’s Everyday Life in Traditional Japan concurs:
Many [Buddhist priests] entered into homosexual relationships with

temple acolytes, and the boy prostitutes that flourished at the time
counted them among their reliable clients.
My Japanese campaign has had virtually no contact with monastic Bud-

dhist priests except for brief visits to the head temple of one very ascetic
order. They haven’t visited any temple schools. And, I admit, I haven’t
made any effort to work these institutions into plot-lines. Depicting insti-
tutionalized sexual abuse of children just doesn’t appeal to me. Perhaps
that’s why I’ve also refrained from plot-lines featuring prostitutes.
If I ever did work a monastic page-boy into my Japanese campaign,
it would probably be an adaptation of a kabuki play I read a long time
ago. The monastery’s handsome page-boy was deeply in love with a girl
from a nearby village, and sneaked off to visit her one long winter night.
He returned home a few hours before dawn despite a threatening snow-
storm, only to find that the jealous monks had locked the temple gates.
In the play, he froze to death, but I’d arrange to let the PCs find him.
Kabuki Onnagata (Female Impersonators)

GURPS: Japan devoted a sidebar to the kabuki theatre. I wrote that:
Men played women’s parts. It was considered indecent for real women
to appear on the stage … Samurai and nobles were legally forbidden to
attend plays but did so anyway, sitting in special curtained booths so they
weren’t technically visible as part of the audience.
In the introductory section on Japanese social classes, I classified actors

as hinin (literally ‘non-persons’): outcasts, along with beggars, gamblers
and the eta untouchables. The census enumerated them as a subtype of
animals, not human beings. ‘Killing a hinin,’ I noted, ‘is not considered
murder; it is punished only by a fine.’ I didn’t mention the onnagata,
kabuki’s female impersonators.
Kabuki theatre troupes were all-male. Unlike the Shakespearean
British theatre, women’s parts were not played by boys but by men who
specialized in such roles, speaking in a falsetto. Courtesans and geisha
were sent to kabuki performances to learn from the onnagata (literally
‘women people’) how to behave with proper femininity. Charles J. Dunn
wrote in Everyday Life in Traditional Japan:

The [kabuki] actor had no life apart from the theatre, and this was
especially true of the onnagata, the player of female roles … Actors who
took female parts were expected … to live as women even outside of the
theatre, and to keep any male characteristics, not to mention a wife and
family, very much out of the public view.
Aubrey and Giovanna Halfords’ The Kabuki Handbook notes that onna-
gata ‘even entered the public baths by the ladies’ door!’
Ihara’s Life of an Amorous Man is mainly devoted to the hero’s esca-
pades with women but has one episode in which a number of handsome
young actors are summoned to a party. The host remarks:
Truly there is fun in playing with young actors … Dallying with these
youths is like seeing wolves asleep beneath [a] scattering of cherry
blossoms, whereas going to bed with prostitutes gives one the feeling of
groping in the dark beneath the new moon without a lantern.
Our ongoing Japanese campaign has one shape-changing cat who brief-
ly became a playwright in order to influence public opinion. He didn’t
make any acquaintances among the actors he wrote for, but just sent
them his play and attended its performance.
I haven’t introduced any plot-lines featuring kabuki actors. I might
someday. It might be amusing to introduce an onnagata who has a couple
of jealous samurai courting him—and is desperately trying to keep both
his lovers from discovering that he also has a wife. Or the onnagata might
be courted by a rich merchant while secretly in love with some poor but
deserving shop clerk. Finally, the onnagata might really be a ronin as-
sassin. Come to think of it, that might also apply to the boy prostitute
or monastic page-boy, just as the vendetta and criminal plotlines I men-
tioned would be adaptable to the onnagata.
Samurai
Oliver Statler wrote in Japanese Inn that the samurai ‘frequently pro-
claimed that love for a woman was an effeminate failing’, meaning that
it didn’t properly inspire a man to bravery. One culturally significant
word still found in modern Japanese dictionaries is wakashinu, ‘dying in
one’s youth’. My GURPS: Japan rules noted that: ‘The cherry blossom is
honoured because it does not wither and fall petal by petal but falls while
still whole. Thus it is emblematic of the samurai, who is willing to throw
his life away in youth for his clan lord.’ My history stopped in the mid-
nineteenth century, so I didn’t go on to mention that the plane flown by
the Japanese shimpu (an ideograph combination misread by Westerners
as kamikaze) was the oka, the cherry blossom.
Hagakure (‘Behind the Leaves’) is an 18th-century classic of bushido,

Design
the samurai philosophy, dictated by the samurai-turned-Zen monk Tsu-

netomo Yamamoto. It stresses the warrior’s obligation toward all the vir-
tues, in the service of his clan lord. Seen from this point of view, one sam-
urai says, homosexual love is at once honourable and dishonourable. It
is honourable because, unlike a man’s love for a woman, it is love of a
social and intellectual equal. It is dishonourable because its very strength
might distract the samurai from his love of his clan lord. Yamamoto’s
own ideal of homosexual love focuses on the issue of integrity:
As a faithful wife would not marry a second time, one should stick to only
one faithful he-lover to have amorous affairs with in his lifetime in the
pursuit of shudo (‘the Way of Men’) … While Saikaku [Ihara] is known for
his impressive remark ‘A young man without a pledged, elder he-lover is
likened to a young girl without a fiancé’, others are apt to make fun of the
shudo lovers. After finding out for sure the steady amorous intentions of
an elder man following several years of association, you could ask him,
from your side, for a shudo relationship. Inasmuch as the two, once thus
tied together, are required to sacrifice their lives for each other’s sake,
one should make doubly certain of the other’s mind.
The highest ideal of shudo, according to Yamamoto, was ‘not disclosing

one’s secret love until he falls dead, still holding his lover dear in his
dying heart.’ Ihara’s own tales of samurai lovers, some of which are col-
lected in Comrade Loves of the Samurai, do not aspire toward this highest
ideal but certainly show brave young men willing to dare death in order
to prove their love for one another.
My GURPS: Japan rules quoted the old Japanese proverb: ‘A man
who loves his wife is spoiling his mother’s servant.’ I wrote that mar-
riage was ‘a legal and financial arrangement, not a romantic one’, that
romantic love was not felt ‘for a respectable woman’. (This attitude per-
sisted well into the twentieth century. A Western woman who married a
Japanese diplomat recorded in her memoirs that one of her husband’s
colleagues was quite shocked when he entered their home one evening
and found them kissing. ‘You are treating your wife as if you respected
her no more than a prostitute,’ he admonished her husband.) Terence
Barrow notes in his preface to Comrade Loves of the Samurai:
The general attitude toward women was similar to that of classic Greece,
namely that women were for breeding but boys were for pleasure.
Women, in both cultures, were thought to make men cowardly, effeminate
and weak … Provided social proprieties were observed, there was no
association of sin with sex. Women were excluded from important arts …
because they were of little social importance. In the circumstances it was
fitting that men should seek men for their most intimate life.
The player characters of my Japanese campaign are wandering pilgrims.

They’ve encountered a broad spectrum of Japanese culture but haven’t

spent much time at court. If they ever live among samurai long enough
to notice the social undercurrents, there are a number of plot-lines in-
volving homosexual samurai that I might use. There’s the samurai who
falls in love with his lord’s page-boy or—even more against court eti-
quette—with his clan lord himself. There’s the samurai who is searching
for evidence to prove his lover guiltless of a charge that led the lord to
put him under house arrest or banish him as a ronin. There’s the samu-
rai whose fiancée or wife dresses like a boy in order to attract him since
he isn’t interested in feminine beauty.
Viking Homosexuality
The Norse attitude toward male homosexuals was quite different from
that of the Japanese. The Eddas refer to Odin and Loki—the most mor-
ally ambiguous of the gods—as having taken on female form, but the
only references the sagas made to homosexuality was in insult contests.
The law codes ruled that you could be outlawed for accusing someone of
being a passive homosexual—or for being a passive homosexual your-
self.
The senna (insult contest) seems to have been a standard preliminary
to most fights. Last year, I gave an example of one of these elaborate in-
sults in Alarums and Excursions and found enough reader interest that for
some months thereafter I ran a ‘Saga Insult of the Month’. Such insults
frequently involved accusations of some sort of sexual perversion, often
sex with animals. In Ale-Hood one angry man tells his enemy:
You … made a big mistake last spring when you rode to the local
assembly. You didn’t notice the fat stallion that Steingrim had till it was
up your backside. That skinny mare you were on faltered under you,
didn’t she, and I’ve never been able to make up my mind whether it was
you or the mare that got it. Everybody could see how long you were stuck
there, the stallion’s legs had got such a grip on your cloak … You didn’t
bother to defend the narrow pass in your backside.
Similarly, in Njal’s Saga, an attempt to settle a bloodfeud by wergeld is

broken up by the accusation, ‘you are … the mistress of the Svinafell
Troll, who uses you as a woman every ninth night’. The translator notes,
‘This particular insinuation, that a man behaved like a woman every
ninth night, was specifically forbidden in the laws, and must have been
not uncommon. It occurs in two other sagas.’
In Gisli’s Saga, a man prepares for a duel by asking a carpenter ‘to
make wooden figures of Gisli and Kolbjorn—‘and have one stand close
behind the other; and the nastiness of that will always be there to shame
them.’ The translator notes that this is ‘significant of a charge of sodomy.’

Design
The fact that only passive homosexuality was considered shameful is

clearly shown in the senna of Sinfjotli the Volsung. In the poem Helgavi-
tha Hundingsbana, Sinfjotli tells his enemy:
A witch in Varin’s isle thou wast,

A woman false, and lies didn’t fashion;
Of the mail-clad heroes thou wouldst have
No other, thou saidst, save Sinfjotli only.
This is paraphrased in The Sagas of the Volsungs:
You probably do not remember clearly now when you were the witch on
Varinsey and said that you wanted to marry a man and you chose me for
the role of husband.
My Vikings for Iron Crown Enterprises had a list of insults for senna in
one of the scenarios. One of them was ‘You kiss your horse when no-
body’s looking’, a bowdlerization of the accusation of having sex with
horses. One of them should have been an accusation of passive homo-
sexuality with a close friend—or perhaps with a troll.
Our Viking campaign has only had one homosexual incident, and
that was the action of a player character, whom the group met as they
sailed past Nastrond, the snake-covered shore of Hel where scoundrels
go after their death. He begged the group to take them with him, and
one of the younger and more naïve members promised him protection
and gave him the name of Mord. I initially role-played Mord but later
gave him (in a pre-arranged deal) to the player who had role-played him
before he’d died, back when his name was Wormtongue.
Later on, in Jotunheim, the group encountered a pack of werewolves;
Mord’s master ordered him to subdue them. Mord found his sword use-
less against them, so he pulled off his clothes and had sex with first the
alpha female and then the alpha male of the pack. No one insulted
Mord (who didn’t take the passive role), but the male werewolf ’s pack
status has changed.
Effeminate Seidr Magic

Understanding the Norse attitude toward passive homosexuality is nec-
essary to properly appreciate the Norse attitude toward seidr (platform)
magic. The patron gods of magic were Freyja the goddess of passionate
love and Odin Val-Father (Slain-Father), lord of madness (including po-
etic inspiration, berserk fury and panic).
Many mythology books portray Odin as the honoured king of the
gods, but the sagas clearly show that many Norse distrusted him and
preferred to direct their prayers to the more forthright Thor or Frey. In

the ‘Lokasenna’ (Loki’s insult contest), Loki and Odin each accuse the
other of having a sexually ambiguous past. Odin tells Loki:
Winters eight wast thou under the earth,

Milking the cows as a maid.
(Ay, and babes didst thou bear.)
Unmanly thy soul must seem.
Loki replies:
They say that with spells in Samsey once

Like witches with charms didst thou work;
And in witch’s guise among men didst thou go;
Unmanly thy soul must seem.
Snorri Sturluson wrote in Heimskringla:
Odin knew and practised that craft which brought most power and
which was called seidr (witchcraft), and he therefore knew much of man’s
fate and of the future, likewise how to bring people death, ill-luck or
illness, or he took power and wit from them and gave it to others. But
in promoting this sorcery, lack of manliness followed so much that men
seemed not without shame in dealing in it; the priestesses were therefore
taught this craft.
Peter Foote, translator of Gisli’s Saga, defined seidr as:
A type of shamanistic magic-working, probably borrowed by the

Norwegians from their Lapp neighbours … The wizard or shaman
mounted a raised platform and fell into a trance, aided normally, it seems
by a circle of singers round about the platform; he was recalled from his
trance by the single song of a special singer … While in the trance it
was believed that his soul was freed and either went to seek information
about the future, or if the purpose was evil, went to ‘attack’ the object
of the rite, whose mind and body could be enfeebled and killed. Seidr
was not considered manly, although it is not said explicitly why in Norse
sources; there are, however, numerous sexual elements in this form of
magic practised till recently by Lappish and Siberian tribes, and similar
elements were probably to be found in its Norse form as well.
Foote and Wilson in The Viking Achievement write that Odin learnt ‘the
magic called seidr which involved such practices as to make people be-
lieve that he played the woman’s part in the sexual act.’ Ellis Davidson in
Gods and Myths of the Viking Age notes that seidr magic seems associated
with the horse cult. (Odin’s magic horse Sleipnir was the child of his
foster brother Loki in mare-form, and knew the path to Hel.) Davidson
hazards a guess that seidr magic was the reason that Norse Christianity

Design
forbade the eating of horseflesh (along with worship of idols and expos-
ing new-born babies). She also notes, but doesn’t explicitly tie into the
seidr ritual, the story of Volsi in Flateyjarbok where a housewife’s ‘god’ is
‘the generative organ of a horse’.
In my Vikings for I.C.E., I wrote:
Male shamans were often despised as unmanly, because they fought with
magic rather than risking death in battle.
I also wrote:
A male shaman was considered effeminate. People gossiped that he

turned into a woman once every eight days because Freyja would not
give her gifts to someone who was always a man. Even Odin had had to
take on women’s form in order to learn shaman magic.
I should have hinted more clearly that the shamanic trance involved
some sort of ritualized sexual encounter in which the shaman took the
passive role.
Two of the player characters in my Viking campaign are female sha-
mans, but neither has ever performed seidr magic’s platform ritual.
They’ve settled for singing themselves into a trance in order to scout
out unfamiliar territory. Perhaps that’s because their divine patron isn’t
Odin but Freyja.
There was also one non-player character shaman, a briefly observed
Finnish witch who enchanted a merchant, stole most of his trade-goods,
and then stuck a ‘sleep-thorn’ in him, producing apparent death. She
fled after the merchant was rescued by his loyal wife.
I don’t want to have any divinatory shaman, male or female, as a ma-
jor figure in the campaign. Norse shamans didn’t indulge in the ambigu-
ous prophecies so beloved by Greek and Roman diviners. Clear, accurate
prophecies are awkward things for a game master to have to deal with.
Other Seemingly Taboo Areas

I seldom buy role-playing sourcebooks and modules. I prefer to design
my own campaigns, based on historical and fictional materials that I’ve
read. But from what I’ve heard, there are a number of other seemingly
taboo areas that most game designers prefer to ignore.
Obviously, attitudes toward homosexuality are significant in a num-
ber of cultures besides Japanese and Norse. There’s classical Greece
and Rome—and the Persia of the Arabian Nights (see the Richard Bur-
ton translation). And Giraldus Cambrensis asserted in The Description of
Wales that:

It was because of their sins, and more particularly the wicked and
detestable vice of homosexuality, that the Welsh … lost first Troy and then
Britain. In the History of the Kings of Britain [by Geoffrey of Monmouth]
we read of Malgo, King of the Britons, who practised homosexuality, and
many others with him.
That’s sixth-century post-Roman Celtic Britain, the era of the historical

King Arthur.
Another taboo subject, shunned in all the game rules I’ve ever seen,
is the possibility of rape, particularly within the player character group.
This subject came up recently in Alarums and Excursions. I was surprised,
and shocked, to hear a number of stories of role-played rape of player
characters, often used as a way of discouraging girls from joining an all-
male player group. It may be time for game designers to admit that this
sort of thing can happen and to address it in the official rules.
Is socially distasteful sexual behaviour the only taboo area in role-
playing game designing? Of course not. There’s also religion. It’s ac-
cepted in fantasy settings because religious miracles provide a quick fix
for wounds that the culture’s low-tech medicine can’t handle. It’s virtu-
ally ignored in twentieth-century or futuristic high-tech cultures (unless
you count the Star Wars Force as a religion).
This neglect of religion means gaming sourcebooks present high-
tech cultures as less well-rounded than low-tech ones and usually make
little or no attempt to set out the culture’s moral guidelines. Some gam-
ing companies explain that their fantasy games describe the obviously
false gods of pagan mythology, but their twentieth-century and futuristic
games don’t describe the One God of contemporary faiths. Of course
that puts them in the position of allowing believers in pagan gods to
benefit from miracles while believers in the One God cannot expect any
supernatural help against creatures of the Cthulhu mythos or the vam-
pires of the Masquerade.
Do I expect any of this to change? Not unless our culture does. As
long as there are subjects that gaming publishers prefer to ignore or,
even more significantly, perceive their buyers as preferring to ignore,
then they will continue to encourage game designer self-censorship.
What’s more, they’ll use their own blue pencils if the self-censorship pro-
cess breaks down. The publisher always has the last word.
Lee Gold found out about role-playing games from fellow science-fiction fans.
Shortly thereafter, she started her RPG fanzine, Alarums & Excursions, which
recently reached issue #240. Through contacts made in A&E, Lee has also writ-
ten Land of the Rising Sun and Lands of Adventure (Fantasy Games Unlimited),
GURPS: Japan (Steve Jackson Games) and Vikings (Iron Crown Enterprises).
Lee has an M.A. in English Literature tucked away in a closet somewhere.

Design
The Design
and Use of
Characters
Frank Carver examines the ways in which
we create characters for role-playing games,
and suggests some new directions for
designers to think about
Ever since the first play was performed, or the first child said, ‘Let’s
play a game; I’ll be …’, people have gained learning and enjoyment by
pretending to be imaginary characters. It is only relatively recently that
systems have been developed to describe in detail the characters whose
roles they are going to assume. In most published plays, for example,
all that is provided for the actor is a rough physical description of their
character —everything else must be inferred from the actions and dia-
logue. In other forms of interactive narrative (such as educational games
or children’s play) the concept of ‘the character’, although central to the
experience, is left unmentioned or assumed to be the same as that of the
participant.
Role-playing games, coming from a competitive background, have
traditionally required precise details of everything the character may
or may not do, usually in a numeric form. Since psychological descrip-
tions are difficult to quantify they are often left very vague or even com-
pletely omitted in character designs for gaming. With the introduction
of computer-moderated role-playing the limitations on the complexity
of character descriptions have been almost completely removed. Now
would seem an ideal time to examine the various forms of character de-
scription found in interactive narrative, assess their suitability for their
allotted tasks and present suggestions for future possibilities.

The Design and Use of Characters by Frank Carver
The Different Forms of Character

For the purposes of this article, the wide range of interactive character
types may be grouped into four rough categories. These categories are
based on how much the participant is separated from the character.
1: Physical
This is usually associated with the idea of ‘role-playing’ by those with
little experience of the more esoteric forms. In activities of this type the
character closely resembles the participant physically, intellectually and
psychologically. Interactive training, for example, is often based purely
on the trainee imagining themselves in a different situation and acting
out the resultant interaction with other people or equipment. When used
for educational purposes the character may differ from the player a little
more. The teacher might say ‘Imagine you were alive a hundred years
ago—how would you have lived?’ When used for leisure activities, this
category reaches its most sophisticated expression in live role-playing
such as the popular How to Host a Murder party games. The players are
given names, backgrounds, secrets and motives, and interact with the
others to produce a co-operative story. This expression of role-playing
stops short of later categories, however, as the physical appearance and
mental capabilities of the characters are limited to those of the players.
Most historical re-enactments and games such as paintball and laser tag
also fall into this category, if they have any role-playing element at all.
2: Visual
This category allows the participants to achieve things beyond their own
physical capabilities. These extra abilities can be presented either physi-
cally, using special effects, or in the imagination of the participants. The
important difference between this and the physical group is that the
characters act as if they are really capable of such extraordinary feats.
The most obvious expression of this group is in sword-and-sorcery live
role-playing games, where physical representations of mighty weapons
and magic spells are used to enhance the role-playing experience.
Many children’s games also fall into this category, as do some types of
scripted acting. A ‘method actor’ tries to believe completely in the char-
acter they are playing and act accordingly, even though they are aware
of the stage-effects and the stage-crew.
3: Imaginative
In this category the characters are divorced from the physical appear-

Design
ance and abilities of the participants. This category includes tabletop

role-playing games, play-by-mail games and some computer games, and
can be broadened to include almost all interaction through ‘blind’ me-
dia such as electronic mail. If a six-foot-tall man had to physically per-
form his character then he would find it very difficult to play the role of
a dwarf or space-alien. It is this freedom that players are given in their
choice of characters, along with the greater range of possibilities for the
location and action of the narrative, which have made games of this kind
the most commercially successful of all interactive narratives. There is,
however, a hidden catch which is ignored by most designers and partici-
pants in their rush to explore the seemingly limitless possibilities of this
category. The character cannot leave behind the background, knowl-
edge and skills of the participant, however different they may be. Even
players of games set in other times and places simply accept that every-
one and everything speaks the language in which the game is played!
This limitation is the major difference between this group and the next.
4: Assisted
There are very few examples of this type of game at present. It would
involve a system which filters and alters all information which passes to
and from the participant. This would prevent them from using knowl-
edge and skills that their character does not possess, and enable them to
use skills and knowledge that they do not have, but their character does.
Several tabletop role-playing games have attempted this, usually by re-
quiring the referee to pass notes to the players, but at best this can only
eliminate simple language and cultural problems. The tactical, reason-
ing, and deductive skills of the participant are still active. Implementing
a system such as this also puts a huge load on the referee and usually
harms or limits other aspects of the experience. With the increasing use
of information technology in interactive narrative, the possibilities are
rapidly opening up for the provision of assisted characters. In the true
assisted interaction all tasks, including tactical and deductive ones, are
adjusted to be as difficult for the participant as for the character. Aspects
of this have been tried in some computer games. For example, maps,
passwords and magic spells sometimes vary between sessions so that the
player can’t use a ‘dead’ character’s knowledge. There is a long way to
go yet.
Character Use
As well as dividing the types of character into groups it is important to
clarify the stages that a character goes through during interactive nar-
rative. Once again there are four categories. Not every character passes

through all these phases, and some pass through phases more than
once, but all phases are applicable to all characters.
1: Creation
Obviously all characters must be created at some time, although the pro-
cess of creation is almost vestigial in the physical group. A referee, teach-
er or director explanation about how the participants should behave is
often all that is provided. In the visual, imaginative and assisted groups,
character creation is usually the first step in the introduction to the nar-
rative. Sometimes pre-defined character descriptions are given to par-
ticipants, who have no input to the creation process, but this doesn’t
mean that there was no creation phase, just that it was performed by the
designer or the referee.
In the creation phase it is important to examine how much choice
players are given when choosing characters. Many computer games
and some tabletop role-playing games generate character details almost
completely randomly, leaving only the choice of a name to the creator.
Other games and most non-competitive interactions allow a large de-
gree of choice: the creator just thinks up a character and then describes
it. Between these extremes there is a spectrum of compromise systems,
such as the many variants of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons character
creation system that allows selection from randomly generated possibili-
ties.
One interesting compromise was offered in Games Workshop’s Gold-
en Heroes which allowed random generation of character abilities, but
required the creator to justify them to the referee. This requirement led
to considerably more thought being put into the character background,
and often produced more interesting characters. Other approaches to
character creation include the attribute auctions in the Amber game,
which try to provoke involvement with the characters by introducing
player competition and conflict, and the step-by-step simulation of
a character’s pre-history used in the Traveller game and in Task Force
Games’ Central Casting book series.
Although creation systems are usually presented as ways of fitting the
character idea into the game’s mechanics, in practice they also have a far
more important function. When someone is asked to create a character,
particularly for imaginative or assisted interaction, the possibilities are
often quite bewildering. One of the purposes of a methodical character
creation system is to provide a framework for the imagination of the cre-
ator. The limitation of a system and the lists of possibilities give a com-
forting illusion of control to the character creation process, even though
the eventual character design will often transcend the constraints of the
creation system. Lists of suggestions, classes and character templates can

Design
also act as a springboard for creativity, with the act of selection from the
list prompting more detailed thought from the character creator.
2: Description
During this phase the initial character-design–with abilities, back-
ground, knowledge, motives, physical and psychological appearances
and anything else the creator has provided–is described in terms appli-
cable to the eventual use of the character. For physical group characters
this phase is often more important than that of creation; other partici-
pants still need to know about the relationships between characters even
when the characters are similar to the participants. In many role-playing
games the creation and description phases are intertwined so tightly,
with each aspect of the character being created and described individu-
ally, that they cannot be easily separated. However, I think that descrip-
tion is really a separate phase even for these games, as becomes quickly
apparent when an existing character is moved to a different interaction
system.
It is in the description phase that the various character systems dif-
fer the most. The basic aim is to provide information to the participants
about the capabilities of the character. Different amounts of detail are
required for different uses; information appropriate to a referee or di-
rector may not be required, or even useful, for the person portraying
an enemy. Generally, the controller of a character needs to know the
experience, motivations, feelings and capabilities of the character. The
controllers of other characters need to know how they should relate to
each other, and referees need to know how the character can interact
with the rest of the universe. A full character description system would
include details for all these uses, and provide the relevant information
as required.
Most role-playing game systems are good at providing character de-
scriptions; indeed, some seem to provide little else. Where these systems
commonly fall down is in separating the different classes of information
for the different users. There seems to be an implicit assumption that all
the information is for the controller of the character and anyone else will
have to ask. This limitation often makes a referee’s job a lot harder than
necessary. Character description for interactive narratives other than
games are usually based on words; the character is described in the lan-
guage of the participants. Descriptions for games, in contrast, are almost
exclusively in terms of numbers. A character description sheet for the
Rolemaster game, for example, often contains well over one hundred
numbers to describe a single person. Some computer games present the
character controller with a predominantly or wholly pictorial representa-
tion of the character. As virtual reality techniques become more popular

this practice is bound to increase. These three representations tend to

affect the information contained in the character description; words are
a natural way to express aims, attitudes and beliefs; numbers are good at
physical dimensions and comparative skill levels; and images are the ob-
vious way to show what the character looks like. The relative proportions
of these methods in a character description are a good way of determin-
ing the type of interaction best suited for the character.
3: Application
This is the period during which the playing, learning or performance
actually takes place. The way this proceeds should not be dependent
on the system in use; but an inappropriate system can profoundly alter
or even stifle the expectations of the participants. The most successful
and fulfilling interactive narratives offer as much freedom of choice to
the participants as possible; any limitations should be part of the story
rather than the character application system. Different methods of inter-
action impose their own technical limits. For example; solo game-books
present at most three or four choices at each decision point, leaving no
room for alternative strategies, and computer games may either require
simple, small-vocabulary sentences or treat everything as movement of
an on-screen picture.
Even interaction systems that can offer great flexibility, such as table-
top role-playing, may be distinguished in other ways, such as how they
resolve character-to-character and character-to-environment contests.
In the Amber role-playing game, all contests are resolved by comparison
of the character descriptions or by a referee’s decision. In other role-
playing games there is usually some random element such as the rolling
of dice or the picking of cards from a shuffled deck. This randomness
is used either directly (‘The falling meteor has a 50% chance of crash-
ing on your home town’), modified by a character attribute or ability
(‘Roll a number less than your strength score to lift that object’), as a
contest (‘Both of you roll a die and the highest number wins’) or as some
combination of the above. In the TORG game, for instance, resolving
a typical ‘Can I do this?’ question might involve rolling a twenty-sided
die, rolling it again and adding the results if the indicated number was a
ten or twenty, looking the resultant number up in a table, adding num-
bers from character attributes and cards from a special TORG deck, and
finally comparing the result with a difficulty number chosen by the ref-
eree. Luckily, most task resolution systems are not this complicated.
In the physical group of games there is often little by way of an ex-
plicit system for resolving questions of this nature. The assumption is
that if the participant can do it, then so can the character. This is the
easiest way to distinguish physical group interactions from the visual

Design
group; visual interactions need a way to decide what the character can
accomplish. Task resolution systems in the visual group are not gener-
ally as developed as those in the imaginative group. A major problem is
that, unlike tabletop role-playing for example, these visual events often
have a large number of participants in different places and situations.
It is simply not possible for a referee to adjudicate every action. Allow-
ing the participants to resolve their own conflicts can work if the par-
ticipants are responsible and non-competitive, but there is always the ‘I
shot you!’ ‘No, you missed me!’ situation. Several approaches have been
tried to resolve this problem from rolling dice, through scissors/paper/
stone challenges, to token-passing. In my opinion, token-passing shows
the most promise but can be complicated to plan and use. For example,
to resolve a shooting in a competitive and secure way might involve the
shooter showing the target a gun token and handing over a bullet token,
in return for which the target hands over a wound token. When a tar-
get has no wounds left they are dead (or at least out of action); when a
shooter has no gun token or no bullet tokens left they cannot inflict any
more wounds.
4: Modification phase
Normally, after application, there is a period during which the actions
of the previous phase have their effect on the character. If a character
is retired, or has not survived the application phase, then this consists
solely of removing the character from the environment. In education
and training this is when the lessons of the interaction are consolidated,
questions are answered and loose ends tied up: a vital part of the learn-
ing process. In a performance such as a stage play the change to the
characters may be small, but by adopting slightly different viewpoints
and attitudes each time, an actor can keep the freshness and spontaneity
which distinguishes live theatre from a recording.
Where the character is different from the controlling participant,
there is more freedom to change the character to reflect the experi-
ences of the application phase. The changes to the character depend
to a large degree on the character and the setting, but they will usu-
ally include at least: growth and ageing; physical and mental injuries or
scars; increased knowledge and skills; and changes in relationships with
other characters. Where a system is provided to handle the modification
phase, it is usually an offshoot of the character description system used
in the second phase. Choices made in the description phase can have a
strong effect on the possibilities for change after the action. Role-playing
games have a wide variety of complex character modification systems
ranging from the fixed career path of the Dungeons & Dragons game
(where a character merely collects experience points until a threshold

is reached and then receives a package of improved skills and attrib-

utes), to SIMPLE where character improvement depends entirely on the
choice of the player. Some game systems, such as RuneQuest, try to limit
improvement to those skills and attributes which have been used during
the application phase. Few role-playing games, because of their tradi-
tionally optimistic and heroic outlook, have mechanisms for the loss of
abilities, so characters in this type of narrative tend to become more
powerful and capable each time they pass through this phase.
After the modification phase characters may be shelved or they
may return, entering at either the description phase (if there have been
major changes) or jumping straight into the action of the application
phase. This cycle may continue as long as the participants find it enjoy-
able or useful.
Characters for the Future of Interactive Nar-

rative
There are obviously many other ways to classify characters and character
systems used in interactive narrative, for example by complexity or by
appropriateness to the background setting. The classification system de-
scribed above is, however, useful to highlight some possible future devel-
opments. One important direction for change is that designers should
seriously consider the potential uses of a character system before and
during development rather than after.
As an example of bad design, there are many live role-playing sys-
tems based on character descriptions from tabletop games which involve
details that are unwieldy in a physical or visual type of interaction. An
inappropriate character system can also limit the flexibility and imagi-
nation of the participants; players of the early Dungeons & Dragons and
Tunnels & Trolls games often felt that their choices were limited to which
door to open or which monster to roll dice against. The development of
character description systems which emphasize psychological and social
aspects has led to a dramatic increase in player choice as well as greater
variety and complexity of scenarios. Over The Edge, for example, is a
tabletop role-playing game with a very psychological and wordy char-
acter description system. This means that the action of the game is far
removed from pushing stereotypical fighters and magicians from one
fight to another.
A correct balance between words, numbers and images in the char-
acter description will help to ensure that the essential concepts of the
character are communicated quickly and reliably to all participants. It is
also important to consider the information required by all the potential
users of the character. Everything required by the controller of a char-
acter, the controllers of other characters, and the designer or referee of

Design
any future scenarios ought to be provided. Some thought should also be

put towards keeping secret information separate so that the appropriate
parts of a character description may be passed around or copied without
compromising the character.
As the quantity and variety of interactive narrative continues to grow
it is vitally important to ensure that participants are not put off by com-
plex and bureaucratic character design and description systems. One
partial solution to this is to consciously separate the creation and de-
scription phases so that the essence of a character can be adapted simply
for any intended use. Role-playing games and magazines are already
becoming bogged down with conversion details to and from other sys-
tems. It is also important to eliminate grey areas and allow for future
expansion and alternative uses. This does not mean continually adding
more laborious charts, tables and books of specifics, but ensuring that
the basic character description and interaction system is consistent, flex-
ible, and simple enough to handle future demands. If a system has a
workable general method for contests between character abilities then
it should not be necessary to have a special process for, say, combat or
athletics.
It may seem obvious that for someone to play a different character it
helps to understand why that character acts as he or she does. Unfortu-
nately this is often ignored while designing an interesting set of charac-
ter interaction rules. This is the largest problem with existing character
systems; most do not even cover the basics of what is called ‘character’
outside the field of interactive narrative. An effective character descrip-
tion should at the very least cover the following major points, all of which
help potential users to quickly come to grips with character behaviour:
• Aims: What the character wishes to accomplish from life, or from

the particular scenario or experience under consideration.
• Beliefs: What the character thinks is true. This covers religious
beliefs as well as specific details about the environment and other
characters. Beliefs need not be true!
• Motivations: Why the character has the above aims and beliefs;
why he or she acts in a certain way.
• Knowledge: Information not necessarily possessed by other char-
acters. Although most modern character systems describe abili-
ties and skills quite well, possession of information can be just as
powerful but is often ignored.
• Background: Complex characters don’t (usually) spring fully
formed into existence. Some idea of where the character has been
and what he or she has done helps to ‘flesh out’ the character.
This point is powerfully described in the Central Casting books.

The above points are often best illustrated with examples: typical say-
ings or actions, particular incidents from the past, pictures, props and
so on. The aim is to build, in the head of every involved participant, a
model of the character so that future actions can be generated from the
details given.
There are also character analysis techniques used in other fields
which may provide helpful ideas for use in interactive narrative. Em-
ployment agencies and psychoanalysts, for example, have assembled
systems for describing the abilities, attitudes, and actions of people. Very
little of this has found its way from the real world into the world of simu-
lations and games.
With the increasing variety of character description systems, all po-
tential users should be free to choose a system that best suits the in-
tended application and participants. Adopting a form of classification
as outlined above will hopefully result in interactive narratives that can
concentrate on the story, not the system.
Frank Carver first encountered role-playing through D&D in 1979. Since then
he has been a lifeguard, a Royal Navy officer, an electronic engineer, a student,
a computer programmer, a writer and a small businessman—and that’s just in
real life! Frank is also the author of SIMPLE, the one-page role-playing system,
and is often to be encountered demonstrating and giving it away at conventions.

Reviews
Interactive Fantasy will review
any product which it considers
to relate to role-playing, story-
telling or any associated field.
Products are examined with an
unbiased, informed critical eye
and particular attenion is paid
to innovative approaches, with
a view to the development of
the form

Reviews
Aria: Worlds characters. The long-term objec-

by Christian Scott Moore tive is to create a General Myth out
and Owen Matthew Seyler of the stories of the various rising
Last Unicorn Games civilizations on your world.
285 pages; $25.95 Each epic that players cre-
ate is referred to as a ‘canticle’.
In one of these ‘canticles’, players
Aria: Role-Playing co-operate to follow a civilization
by Christian Scott Moore
through its growth from a small
and Owen Matthew Seyler
community to a city or even an
Last Unicorn Games
empire. The various types of civi-
292 pages; $29.95
lization are analysed from the en-

vironmental parameters of Scope,
Environmental Profile, General
Editor’s Note: Profile, Historical Profile and the
Aria is a product that has generated a Hierarchy of Social Estates. Each
lot of interest and strong feelings. IF re- of these factors is covered in a sep-
ceived two reviews which took radically arate chapter and the concept is
different stances towards the product, explored in detail before any dice
and I have therefore taken the slightly charts are introduced. These dice
unusual decision to print them both charts are optional, which is for-
side by side. tunate since the Worlds system as
written is far too dice-intensive.
Reviewed by Claudia T. Smith I play-tested Aria: Worlds
Aria: Worlds is a new role-play- four times with the same group of
ing game aimed at people who players. The players assumed the
are interested in creating their role of ‘travellers’, and I became
own worlds. The designers com- the ‘Mythguide’. The games as-
ment that: ‘In many ways, Aria is sumes that the Mythguide will act
as much a design tool as a role- as a general referee and will super-
playing system.’ The Aria: Worlds vise the trials that the world be-
system consists of a set of rules for ing created has to face. Trials may
devising a planet and the civiliza- range from the grand (such as how
tions that inhabit it. Nearly every a natural disaster affects the food-
factor that affects the evolution of producing capabilities of a given
a planet is taken into considera- region) to the seemingly obscure
tion, including such variables as (such as how a family’s fortunes
climate, land masses and possible are affected by a slight swing in
population blights. The reader politics). The game provides a sys-
is guided through the process of tem for determining how the trials
creating civilizations that are true affect other trials, which is impor-
to life. Aria: Worlds concerns itself tant if the Mythguide is relying on
with the creation of epics, rather dice to determine the outcome of
than with the actions of individual their tale.

Reviews
There is a strong temptation The first game did illustrate the

for Mythguides to influence these absolute need for a good guide.
trials either too strongly or not at It is here that the Aria: Worlds
all. If they exert too much influ- system raises an interesting ques-
ence, they may mould the Gen- tion: how will players react to con-
eral myth too closely to their own trolling a lineage, rather than a
agenda and morality; and if they single individual? In most RPGs
do not intervene enough, the cam- the individual is the one experi-
paign may deteriorate into a series encing the adventure, and if they
of battles that create an unrealistic die then another can be created.
society. If, for example, the play- In Aria, a canticle can span several
ers decide that they want to see generations —even entire epochs.
their society of ‘Kephrae’ develop If a player’s line dies, the repercus-
into one that is philosophically sions on the society can be drastic,
based and believes in staying ab- so the players must plan and re-
solutely passive at any cost, then act with history and the future in
the referee may be tempted to de- mind. While most gamers are ex-
cide that surrounding societies do ceedingly creative, no game has at-
nothing to interfere, whereas in a tempted to cover the scope of time
more realistic world, the instinct to that Aria: Worlds does. I do not
ravage what appears to be an easy know whether most gamers would
target would prevail and ‘Kephrae’ be able to consider all the factors
would have to create a militia to involved in creating a world.
compensate. Only in the last game were the
In the first playtest of the players able to identify with na-
game, the Mythguide allowed the tions, communities and areas of
players complete and free control the globe, rather than with indi-
of their world, and the end result viduals. Up to then they had been
was a fast growth of several civili- trying to force the story into the
zations, all of which were pacifistic terms of several heroes whose ex-
in nature. The players co-operated ploits would conquer the world.
but the world we ended up with During the second run of the
seemed to be forced and unrealis- game, I had to remind the play-
tic. There had been no wars, and ers that they were not supposed to
even the logical evaluations of the play an individual character unless
various civilizations seemed to be that character was absolutely vital
far too scientific and technological to the world’s development.
for such a passive world. This raises a second ques-
The other three playtests were tion: what happens when a play-
far more encouraging, since the er’s myth dies? In one test run,
players had started to feel more in- a player lost an entire growing
volved with the game. They started community that had been well
working against each other, enjoy- established, due to an unforeseen
ing the competitiveness that came attack by marauders. His reaction
from the ‘diplomatic’ approach. was extreme—even more so than
Reviews
the average gamer losing their lines but, considering the scope of
favourite player character. In the Aria, there is no reason to assume
process of building the canticle, that humans will be the only peo-
good players will become very in- ple that will create a society. At the
volved with their part of the world. very least, an explanation should
This makes Aria more intense than have been given for focusing only
most games. on the humanoid races. With all
This intensity, however, does the detail that has been put into
produce amazingly rich worlds the analysis of the various hu-
with histories that can be useful in man civilizations, this seems a very
a variety of situations. We experi- strange omission.
mented with using a world that Despite this, the Aria system is
we had created in Aria in a differ- well researched and thorough in its
ent system. This was very success- approach to world-building. The
ful, since all the history had been idea of a group creating worlds and
created, all the peoples had been taking the parts of protagonists on
brought to the point where the an epic scale is a fresh and welcome
other game system could take over, change from the usual campaigns
and the characters used in the ex- of violence and individual gain that
perimental game knew their histo- have pervaded the games industry.
ries far better than is the case in The Worlds system is also a fantas-
the average game. tic resource for writers who want
We were, however, left wonder- to develop worlds for their stories.
ing why the creators of Aria didn’t How players will react to this new
include guidelines and rules for approach is anybody’s guess, but I
the creation of alien races. The think Aria will appeal to the game
reader is presented with many hu- enthusiast who wants to create uni-
man character types and family verses rather than destroy them.
Reviewed by Mike Cule

I wanted to like Aria. It promised a the systems of magic for a game
lot and on first sight looked good. world. It promises, moreover, that
In the last analysis I can’t remem- it will allow participants to play the
ber the last time I was so disap- parts of whole families and nations.
pointed with a game. To quote the back cover of Aria:
So what were the promises? Role-Playing: ‘during the course of
Aria is intended to be a Meta- a single game, players can assume
design system. (‘Metadesign’ is the roles of individual personas,
one of the terms that Last Unicorn lineages or even whole societies’.
Games has trade-marked. I don’t Aria: Role-Playing is intended to
think they need have troubled introduce the system of generat-
themselves.) It is intended to be the ing and gaming both individuals
means by which a referee, with the and societies: Aria: Worlds (which
active co-operation of the players, could better be called Aria: Socie-
designs the societies, the races and ties) expands the rules for creating

Reviews
cultures. The publishers are plan- basic ideas behind the writing of
ning more supplements, dealing the game.
with the physical aspects of worlds It was clear that someone had
and providing more information read (once, at a guess) some Jo-
on military gaming. seph Campbell: there is a lot of
Both books look beautiful: they stuff in the ‘Prelude to Aria’ about
are full of lovely line drawings that the importance of myth. Indeed,
depict the medieval and renais- the game has the subtitle: ‘Canti-
sance cultures that are the focus of cle of the Monomyth’. This is just
the system. The game isn’t totally surface chrome. This game is not
generic, but sets out to model high based on mythology, and the un-
and low fantasy settings up to (but derstanding or appreciation of the
not including) the invention of mythological way of viewing things
gunpowder. is not part of it.
Right, I’ve described the books There was also a list of defini-
and the intention behind them. I tions of game terms and philoso-
will now proceed to lose my temper. phy. Again the surface reading
A role-playing rulebook is a of Campbell shows up. Words
device for teaching you how to like ‘Archetype’ and ‘Aspect’ are
play a game. I think that’s as near abused throughout the game as
self-evident as anything can be. mechanical terms for every occa-
It must be constructed with that sion. I read this list twice and was
function in mind. If you can’t use no wiser. It even defined ‘Suspen-
it for that purpose then you might sion of Disbelief ’. This caused my
as well throw it away unread, as I worry to increase. If ever there was
was tempted to do with my copies a self-evidently clear phrase it is
of the Aria books many times. (I ‘suspension of disbelief ’.
got all the way through the Worlds It soon became clear that I was
book but I confess to having to facing a case of severe cruelty to the
skip parts of Role-Playing. I feel lit- English language. This game has
tle shame for this. It’s damn noble more jargon, more waffling, more
of me to plod through the thing vague generalities and general se-
anyway for the sake of this review. I mantic dross than it has been my
knew after the first chapter or so it misfortune to read since I gave
would be no use to me.) up trying to comprehend Marx-
I first became uneasy when ist literary criticism when I was at
faced with the Preface, which university. Oh, And More Needless
some fool has chosen to print Capitals Than You Have Ever Seen.
over a dark, marble background What the game seems to be
that makes it even more unread- based on is sociology. Now I’ve
able than the ones in the Vampire nothing against sociology as a
books. My unease increased as I study, but the more jargon-ridden
read on into the ‘Prelude to Aria’, aspects of the discipline seem to
which appears in both books and have had a bad effect on the au-
explains the core system and the thors. I could not penetrate some
Reviews
of the sentences at all, so it is just method to account for each

possible that there is a good game environmental peculiarity. If a
waiting to be discovered under- more accurate Pricing System
neath all the verbiage. But I doubt is desired by the Mythguide or
Ensemble, they must examine
this.
their environment carefully
(I would like to say parentheti- and apply or devise another
cally that I have a degree in Eng- system with which they are
lish from the University of Oxford. more comfortable. Alternately,
A game which can, as this one did, the Mythguide can stipulate
drive me to have to look up a word prices on an item by item basis
in my dictionary does not meet my during play. If this method is
criteria for clear and user-friendly employed players should role-
writing. The word, for anyone play economic transactions.
If the Mythguide finds that
who’s interested, was ‘metes’.
the Ensemble does not share
Hands up those who know instant- his vision of average prices he
ly what it means? I thought so.) can either moderate his prices
Where I could penetrate the toward the group’s wishes or
surface awfulness of the writing, allow the players to bargain for
I found the sub-surface awfulness lower prices.
of the thinking. The authors seem In other words, if you don’t like
to have grasped one central idea our system, make up your own or
well, that of providing a detailed wing it. If your players don’t like
set of cultures from which players that, fudge things.
can draw their characters. They If I only had to consider the
have made this the core of their ef- Worlds book I would give it per-
fort and they are to be congratulat- haps a beta minus: good basic
ed. But the game systems manage ideas, needs to try harder. ‘More
to be simultaneously rigid within real world examples and general
a set of over-detailed sociological background on sociological ideas
categories and somehow squishy for the general reader needed.
when it comes to hard details. I will look forward to the second
Whenever the authors reached a edition,’ I would have said.
really hard bit, like economics, you But when it came to battling
got what amounted to a set of un- my way through the Role-Playing
clear suggestions and then what book my patience soon shattered,
boiled down to the sentence: ‘If first on the presentational incom-
there are any more complications petence (pages and pages with-
the referee will have to figure out out an example, terms referred to
how to fudge things himself ’. So hundreds of pages before they are
the section on pricing contains this defined, illogical sequence—Oh,
classic bit of Aria-speak: bah!) and then on the excess com-
Without embarking upon a plexity of the character generation
detailed economic analysis and gaming systems.
of a particular Narrative Aria uses a point-based char-
Environment, there is no simple
acter generation system of mon-
Reviews
strous complexity. I found myself And there are advantages and

thinking longingly of the simplic- personality traits to complicate
ity of Space Opera, say. One of the things. All of those can have quali-
design aims that the ‘Prelude to fying Aspects. Indeed they are re-
Aria’ so proudly boasts is ‘Playable quired to have them. I think. I take
Realism’. I have to tell the design- sadistic delight in quoting from
ers that they have not achieved it. the section on personality traits:
No system with sixteen character- Personality Trait values range
istics can be said to have achieved from one to ten. Values from
it. (The fact that only five of these one to five simply indicate basic
are ‘developed’ without spending Personality Traits. When a Trait
extra points for special advantages reaches a value of six, it becomes a
complicates rather than simplifies Motivation. Values of six and seven
things.) indicate Motivations and values of
Each of the skills (‘Expertises’ eight and nine indicate Passions.
in Aria-speak) uses one Attrib- A value of ten indicates an Obses-
ute as prime determinant of Skill sion. Personality Traits are divided
Base and two out of a list of four into three distinct categories —
other Attributes to further modify Apparent, Suppressed, and Con-
the Skill Base which might concealed. Motivations, Passions and
ceivably make a character more Obsessions are always either Ap-
detailed (this one practises Di- parent or Concealed. They can
plomacy based on Intelligence never be Suppressed.
and Logic, and that one based on All of which waffle should give
Wisdom and Communication) but you some idea of how game me-
it doesn’t make using the system chanics and the urge to put every-
any easier. And each skill can be thing in categories overwhelm the
(or must be) assigned an Aspect, development of character in the
which I think is like a specializa- Aria system. I thought that Castle
tion, but different. Falkenstein went a little far in insist-
When you get to use the Trial ing on a rules-light, characteriza-
Resolution System, you get not tion-heavy system of describing a
one or two but five different kinds character but reading Aria has led
of success from Mythic to Marginal me to look back nostalgically to it.
and five different kinds of failure There was also something
from Marginal to Catastrophic. I called ‘Windows of Opportunity’
fear it may be beyond the ingenu- which seem to be general-purpose
ity of most Mythguides to think fudge factors to allow characters to
of ways in which a Superior Suc- do things that people from their
cess is different from an Extraor- background can’t normally do. I
dinary Success when the players didn’t really get my head around
turn to them and ask what the dice ‘Windows of Opportunity’ since
roll means exactly. I have enough the exception is cunningly intro-
trouble just handling Criticals and duced before you’re shown the
Fumbles. normal way the character genera-
Reviews
tion system works. The equivalent that.

GURPS mechanic, the ‘Unusual The chapter that might have
Background Advantage’, takes one made the whole book worthwhile
paragraph to describe. ‘Windows was the one called Interactive His-
of Opportunity’ takes two mind- tory. The idea is that to allow so-
numbing pages. cietal development in the world
But even the character genera- background, the referee should
tion bits, awful though they are, drop out of individual character
pale beside the degree of waffle time and into society time at ap-
and bilge that fills the chapter on propriate breaks in the campaign,
How To Design Your Own Cosmol- allowing years or decades to pass
ogy and Magic System. Here, if while the players take the parts of
anywhere, the authors should have their characters’ families, factions,
made good their boasts about the nations or whatever, and allow the
Mythic nature of their game. But creation of a large-scale history
you get more and more generali- for the campaign. You then drop
ties and tosh and are left at the end back into character time and take
with a horrendous job of building up the same character (older and
the mechanics and detail of a mag- wiser) or their children and ap-
ic system without one word of gen- prentices or whatever.
uine practical help. It is possible The idea of gaming on a long
to write books about generating time-scale is not new. Pendragon
magic systems and how the gods tried it and although I know of
and magic fit into the world. The only a few gamers with enough
RuneQuest rules and GURPS: Re- patience to run a campaign long
ligion provide fine examples that enough to see children and grand-
not only give playable societies children of original characters I
but also mechanics that are simple never thought it was impossible.
enough to understand and adapt But here the authors’ determi-
and will inspire the referee to nation to be generic and cover
make something of their own. It is the whole of their chosen period
possible. It has been done. Which (their dedication to Metadesign,
makes this sort of paragraph all in short) has meant that the Inter-
the more unforgivable: active History chapter isn’t rooted
Esoteric Preparation Aspects in anything. There are not the
include the respect of specific Ori- simple mechanics for generating
gin or Reality-based Correspond- events in a particular society that
ence, an adherence to certain ac- Pendragon had.
cepted Laws of Reality, the Solidi- The whole idea seemed to me
fication of individual Paradigms, flawed and not sufficiently play-
or the need to Shape Affinities tested. There are no examples
when directing Omnessence at un- of play (actual dialogue between
responsive targets. Mythguide and players as op-
There is a whole chapter like posed to examples of how me-

Reviews
chanics work) and it was here I So, intentions 10 out of 10, execu-
missed these most. I wanted to see tion approximately 2 out of 10. An-
printed on the page the dialogue other big book (I might just keep
that would occur when a session of the Worlds book to raid for ideas)
Interactive History was running. to go into the sack marked ‘Buy in
My imagination failed to come up haste, repent at leisure’ along with
with anything remotely believable. Nephilim and some others. Perhaps
There are lots of examples of so- I can sell them at the next games
cieties (as you might expect, the convention to someone who hasn’t
one solid achievement of the sys- read this review.
tem) but no examples of play that And the next time, Last Uni-
I could find. corn Games, (if there is a next
A project of this kind could time) don’t try to be all things to
not possibly be a game playable all men, try to root your designs in
‘straight-out-of-the-box’. I did something specific or at least give
not expect that. But I do expect specific historic examples, playtest
a role-playing manual to provide not only the system but the book,
the systems by which I, as referee, and for heaven’s sake show your
can build a world and then run a manuscripts to someone passingly
game. In focusing on the first Last acquainted with the English lan-
Unicorn have fumbled the second. guage.
MasterBook the business has value, somehow.

by Ed Stark and Bill Smith And in any case, for every dedi-
West End; 176 pages; $25 cated follower of dicelessness, or
narrative-orientation, or troupe-
The World of style play, or Gothic Gnosticism,
there seems to be an equally fer-
Bloodshadows vent traditionalist with a box full
by Greg Farshtey
of dice and a cheerfully inartistic
West End; 160 pages; $20
viewpoint.
But games companies show
The World of Indiana a certain inclination to go with
Jones the wave. After all, if they can’t
by Brian Sean Perry see themselves as innovative and
West End; 144 pages; $20 alert, what are they? Their busi-
ness text-books tell them that a
Reviewed by Phil Masters stagnant market is a dying market.
For a relatively youthful and frank- Not that they all want to anticipate
ly small-scale hobby, role-playing the field too much, of course; the
games are strikingly fashion-prone. text-books say that that’s danger-
Or perhaps that isn’t surprising; ous, too. In fact, a new game-sys-
maybe we gamers need something tem such as MasterBook can flaunt
to argue over, to make us feel that a certain resistance to fashion, and

Reviews
probably not suffer for it. exercise than Torg. The world-
It’s not that West End Games books are, naturally, also available
has been too ostentatiously reac- on their own. How much continu-
tionary; MasterBook is a skills-based ity there is between the two game-
‘character design’ system with nary systems, I can’t say.
a sniff of randomized attributes, The rulebook’s art is sketchy
character classes or ‘levels’. But and occasionally poor, but toler-
most of the would-be trend-setters able. The rules themselves are rea-
currently have a pretty negative sonably presented, with only a few
view of ‘generic’ systems, contend- spelling errors. I would add that
ing that the rules system should there are none of the industry-
be carefully crafted to fit the game standard ‘see p.00’ errors, either,
world, and that ‘literary’ and ‘nar- but this is mostly because there’s
rative’ concerns should rate above very little cross-referencing. The
simulation mechanisms. Master- book also lacks an index. This
Book is specifically a generic sys- surprised and annoyed me; poor
tem, and it talks a great deal about indexes are bad (and common)
mechanisms before it ever gets enough, but in this age of DTP,
into questions of story-telling. refusing to even try seems like ar-
But there is a hint of the fash- rogance.
ionable when one opens a Master- This problem is compounded
Book box. Along with rules, world- by the fact that the rules frequently
book and dice, there’s the deck of refer to mechanisms and terms
cards. However, these aren’t pretty that haven’t been defined yet,
or collectible, and they certainly so that the initial impression of
have no full-colour pictures on a competently constructed book
them. (As a matter of fact, mine slowly shifts to a persistent, nag-
were rather badly cut, which struck ging dislike. The authors’ prose
me as a bad start.) Two-colour style doesn’t help. It’s not as bad as
printing and a lot of game jargon some of the hobby’s classic disas-
is most of what they give you. Any- ters, but it does clunk a little, with
way, West End could claim to have many redundant clauses (‘A critical
set the trend here, not followed it; failure can be interpreted by the
the system is apparently based on game-master in any way he sees fit,
that which it first published some but, in brief, something goes seri-
years ago in Torg, a game which ously wrong because the character
I must confess I always avoided failed so badly’); an editor could
for its heavy-handed omnivorous- easily have trimmed this stuff by
ness and terribly cumbersome five or ten per cent, leaving space
presentation. MasterBook, which for that index. The rules also use
consists of one moderate-sized English rather oddly at times. For
rulebook, which may optionally example, disadvantageous items
be purchased boxed up with para- on the character sheet are termed
phernalia and a single worldbook, ‘Compensations’ (because they bal-
seems like a rather more civilized ance out the characters’ Advantag-
Reviews
es), and there’s the occasional feel- sult Points total, is cross-referenced
ing that this isn’t the writer’s first to another table to give the degree
language. (‘These Advantages take of success. Actually, this is a fairly
on the auspices of the uncanny.’) straightforward system, and it has
Character creation is a fairly the virtue of applying to combat as
simple process. The player divides to other activities, but it’s not the
68 points up between eight At- simplest I’ve ever seen, and it’s not
tributes, then calculates six more completely intuitive. From writers
Derived Attributes. Two Attributes, who clearly have a taste for pulpish
Intellect and Mind, determine (via action-adventure games, this is
a table) how many points the play- mildly odd; from the publishers
er has to buy skills, with various of the legendarily quick-and-easy,
rules for optional or compulsory swashbuckling Star Wars system,
special-izations. Then the player it’s surprising.
can select Advantages (which can There’s also a standardized
include skill modifiers) from vari- ‘Values’ table, which relates At-
ous ‘columns’, but with the require- tributes or Result Points to weight,
ment to select an equal number of distance or time on a logarith-
Compensations from balancing mic scale. This may worry some
columns. For some reason, some numerophobes, but actually it’s
example Column IV Advantages something that can work well in
are listed, but no Column IV Com- a generic system; it always gave
pensations. All of this is a little the Hero System one significant
more complex than simply paying advantage over the sternly linear
the same type of points for every- GURPS, in my opinion. Master-
thing, but it may ensure that char- Book has to fudge its numbers a lit-
acters are a little more complex tle in places, but not too seriously.
and interesting. The character fea- Then there’s the cards. These
tures listed look generally reason- aren’t actually compulsory; in fact,
able, although I’d want to playtest they represent an attempt to bolt a
for a while to be sure. set of narrative-oriented, melodra-
Task resolution goes as follows. matic mechanisms on top of a more
The player rolls two dice (with conventional, simulationist rules-
some rules permitting advanta- system, and would probably be in-
geous re-rolls and bonuses), and appropriate for some styles of play.
looks the total up on a table to ob- I would certainly not expect some
tain a Bonus Number. This is then of them to see much use in any
added to the character’s relevant game; for example, the ‘Martyr’
Attribute plus Skill (if any) and any card gives some temporary bonus-
referee-assigned Modifiers, to give es and eventually an automatic suc-
an Attribute or Skill Total. If this cess at some dramatic and essential
is greater than a Difficulty Num- task—in the course of which, the
ber defined by the GM or by an PC automatically dies. Despite the
opponent’s abilities, the attempt extra (small) complications they
succeeds; the difference, the Re-
introduce, the cards are alleged
Reviews
to speed up combat—presumably a ‘Weapon Legality’ system, and

because they enforce quick results the notes on weapons’ social ac-
that the basic rules don’t generate ceptability seems to assume a rela-
for themselves. As for their more tively lawless and—pardon my cli-
subtle effects on plot; they may well ché—Americanized society. (Pistols
produce entertaining results in will be available and legal in ‘most
some cases, but in others they may game settings’, although fully au-
merely give the referee the extra tomatic weapons are a tad déclassé.)
trouble of working some specific Last—apart from a couple of
narrative element into the game. A fairly unremarkable sample char-
fair number of referees will prob- acters—is a chapter on game-
ably manage this perfectly well— mastering. This declares that most
but these will be the folk who can referees will use the game’s own
improvise interesting plot twists worldbooks, but not to worry if you
without assistance. want to create your own world—it’s
Magic, miracles, psionics and really pretty easy. This breathtak-
‘super-science’ are handled by a ing statement actually makes sense
unified and abstract set of ‘Spe- when you realize that the author
cial Effects’ rules. These look in- is heavily biased towards incident-
terestingly powerful and flexible, driven games, in which the players
although I’d want to give them a merely need to know the general
lot of testing in a variety of gen- style of genre they are working un-
res before I was satisfied that they der, so their characters hurtle from
could handle everything I’d want scene to scene, propelled by melo-
to throw at them—and that they dramatic plot-lines. It’s actually a
couldn’t be abused. I also suspect perfectly valid and entertaining
that, for example, a minor super- style of play—but hardly the only
scientist trying to make a few im- one. On these terms, the advice
provements to a standard Colt given is reasonable, albeit basic.
.45 could face rather a lot of nu- Two worldbooks came in with
meric fiddling and adjustment, the review copy of the game, both,
while a classic comic-book super- I’m glad to say, a little better writ-
hero would need a lot of new and ten than the rulebook. First out is
changed rules. Despite the pres- The World of Bloodshadows, which
ence of a respectable array of ad- is based on a moderately original
vantages, this system also left me a conjunction. Actually, film noir
little uncertain how the rules were thrillers and gothic horror have
supposed to work. always had certain motifs in com-
The chapter on ‘Basic Equip- mon; for example, as the book’s
ment’ is short and—this being a cover artist clearly realizes, they
traditional RPG at heart—almost both make much use of darkened
entirely concerned with weapons streets and femmes fatales. Person-
and armour. There are a number ally, if I wanted to build a game-set-
of firearms, but no SF weapons to ting around this pairing, I’d base
speak of. The system doesn’t have it on an alternate version of our
Reviews
world’s 1930s, but West End has Even pulp horror works from the
opted to create the fantasy world assumption of normality, even if it
of ‘Marl’, which looks suspiciously then subverts it; it’s the irruption
like a stock sordid-medieval fan- of the ghastly that’s dramatically
tasy setting dragged through an effective. A world in which every
arbitrary industrial revolution. city is ruled by corrupt autocrats
The trouble is that the set-up with zombie servants is not shad-
doesn’t really work. The game- owy and ambiguous; it’s just, well,
world consists of a number of city- nasty. I know that dark is fashion-
states, separated by a monster - able but sometimes games writers
haunted Wilderness which serves seem to feel obliged to buy their
the explicit purpose of keeping black paint by the bucket.
PCs from too much travel—but I The sense of a conventional-
just can’t believe that a twentieth- but-grim sword-&-sorcery world
century-style society could survive being arbitrarily kitted out with
in such a context, even with the trench- coats and .45s is exacerbat-
assistance of this setting’s potent ed by the introduction of the ‘God-
techno-magic. The cities feed war,’ a dimension-spanning strug-
themselves from rather heavily gle between (surprise) Order and
defended surrounding fields, and Chaos which has recently returned
trade between them is restricted to to Marl, and been complicated by
high-value luxuries—and yet cof- the emergence of a third force, the
fee appears to be a common drink renegade ‘Oathbreakers’.
on a temperate-zone continent. To be fair, this conflict has
These are million-person, sky- some interesting elements. For
scrapered modern metropolises, one thing, it’s a dirty, clandestine
not the much smaller trade-towns sort of struggle, and the temporal
of the Middle Ages; they should authorities are mostly concerned
have a whole industrial society to with stopping it getting out of
support them, not a few danger- hand. For another, the side a char-
ous and unreliable farms. It may acter chooses has a significant
be nit-picking, but my suspension effect on their style and skill in
of disbelief just died. spell-casting (and spell-casting is
As for the atmosphere of the a widespread skill in this setting).
game: it may be naive of me to Furthermore, vampires and such
complain, but I think this one is who are committed to Order know
just a little too dark. Film noir was exactly when they will next be-
always a cynical, uncertain genre, come thirsty, whereas their chaotic
but it took its force from an under- counterparts have far more erratic
lying moral coherence; the hon- appetites. Characters accumulate
est detective was living by a code ‘adds’ when they perform services
to which the majority at least paid for a faction (this is a very prag-
lip-service, and there was always matic set-up—intent or attitude
the chance of finding an uncor- don’t come into it), but curiously,
rupted judge or an honest cop. they don’t have to accept these
Reviews
modifiers —so an Orderly charac- tocrats, a couple of necromantic

ter could do a dozen great services crimelords, and a semi-honest po-
for Chaos, and still have exactly lice force (the ‘sentinels’). Down
the same Alignment. these mean streets, it would seem
The book includes a lengthy list pointless to go with anything less
of creatures, all of them more or than a flame-thrower.
less monstrous, many of them hu- On the other hand, PCs can
manoid; all save the ‘Wilderness’ have some advantages. The char-
monsters have at least some notes acter creation chapters mostly deal
on possible use as PCs, although in with a long list of supernatural
some cases, that would be a tricky features, plus a short list of new
and perverse idea. Some of these genre-appropriate skills, and a
species have names I recognize longer one of spells. The author
(Ghouls; Tulpas; the rather low- has clearly attempted to make
key Vampires); many (such as the these last look appropriate to the
bone-eating Orris or the demonic setting, with names such as ‘Glass
Relkazar) do not. Oddly, ‘Hugors’ Jaw’ and ‘Plant Cuffs’, and suc-
are described as human-ogre ceeded in many cases; however,
crossbreeds, but ogres themselves there is also ‘Lightning Bolt’, and
seem to have become extinct. a lot of attention is given to mak-
The default setting for a Blood- ing sure that everyone can learn
shadows game is a city called Se- ‘Fireball’. I also note that many of
lastos, essentially an overgrown these spells have explicitly been
mining boom-town in the mid- made arbitrarily easier and more
dle of the desert (so water-magic reliable than the rulebook’s design
is important here). This is linked system would require; so much
to another city by a supernatural for generic flexibility. The magic
gate, which is essential to its his- system is also the place where the
tory—although the book tries at book sprouts a sense of humour,
one point to claim that this gate with jokes in its spell fumble table,
is somehow secret, this fact is for- and a lot of mime-artist gesturing
gotten everywhere else. Gold is required for castings.
the standard medium of exchange Characters can buy a range of
on Marl; although alchemists can equipment, including a wide as-
manufacture the stuff, this is dis- sortment of rather D&D-ish al-
couraged by the banks, so people chemical concoctions, and weapons
will perform the usual amoral ex- enchanted with assorted one-shot
ertions to dig it up. (I’m not sure spells. Once this sort of stuff starts
of the logic of this myself.) Most seeing action in the hands of PCs
of the mining labour is performed and NPCs, I suspect that the 1930s
by supernaturally possessed zom- feel may become increasingly faint,
bies, just in case you thought that which is a pity. The book’s reason-
this was a pleasant place. The city able but short and conventional
is, of course, run (behind a facade notes on running the game make
of democracy) by a bunch of plu- little reference to maintaining any
Reviews
sort of noir atmosphere. There is lems. Thanks to conditions writ-

nothing that I could see on using ten into the license, players were
various special plot cards in this required to use characters from
genre, despite the main rules’ claim the films, and Indiana Jones him-
that this is a standard part of adapt- self could not be killed. (Actually,
ing the game to a setting. The sam- it’s possible that a sophisticated,
ple adventure is a combination of a ironical, post-modern sort of
painfully easy investigation, lots of game could be worked up within
combat with machine-gun-toting those constraints, but not, I fear,
zombies and crazed wizards, and a by TSR.) I don’t know whether the
glimpse of a giant monster. license is now less valuable, or the
Lastly, the sample starting studios are a notch smarter, but
characters are as varied as the set- West End has escaped such restric-
ting permits, but as a result they tions, allowing the company to
really couldn’t all work together; produce a more general-purpose
in particular, the undead-hating, pulp adventure sourcebook, with
basically honest Sentinel and the the added attraction of a lot of
Vampire Contract Killer would movie stills and references.
surely be automatic enemies. This In fact, one very small problem
section does serve to emphasize with the book may be that the au-
the fact that the only plausible PC thors have been scrupulous in their
types for this game are various adherence to not only the movies,
sorts of tough streets-level opera- but also assorted spin-off novels
tors. It’s all a little dull, really, in and comics, and a Young Indiana
the end. Jones TV series that had passed me
The second worldbook hits the by completely. It’s a good thing
pulp tradition from a very differ- that players aren’t expected to
ent angle. 1930s action-adventure play ‘Indy’; to judge by this text, it
stories have been covered by RPGs was impossible for any major event
several times in the past, but never to occur between 1908 and 1945
to great commercial effect. I sus- without his presence, and he met
pect that many games authors and everyone of significance, so he re-
publishers are full-time popular- ally couldn’t have time for any ad-
culture buffs, who overestimate the ditional adventures. Instead, we
appeal of this genre to the mass of get a strong bias towards Indiana
their more casual customer base. Jones-style plots, with lots of mate-
However, if there’s one thing that rial on archaeology and legendary
might help a ‘pulp’ game break out artefacts. The speech from Raid-
into mass success, it’s a licensed tie- ers of the Lost Ark about archaeol-
up with the ‘Indiana Jones’ movies ogy being mostly book-work and
and their associated material. never taking myths at face value is
Of course, West End isn’t the quoted verbatim, which must get a
first to make this move, but TSR’s prize for recycled self-laceration.
Indiana Jones game of many years But this is generally a pretty
ago had its own, legendary, prob- good pulp-era worldbook, de-
Reviews
spite the occasional lapse, such tions within the PC group, but that
as the enthusiastic discussion of is, after all, the area least under the
personal armour, which is surely referee’s control. This does bring
missing the point in the 1930s. Its out this system’s emphasis on plot
organization is a little erratic, with and narrative drive, however.
chapters on character creation and The ‘Allies and Enemies’ chap-
equipment placed before any sub- ter is a little weird, with just three
stantial treatment of either the pe- characters from the films detailed;
riod or the style of play, while four Indiana Jones, Marcus Brody,
separate timelines (dealing with and Sallah (admittedly, three use-
Indiana Jones’ career, technology ful NPCs). The film villains are
from 1850 to 1958, miscellaneous ignored; although most of them
history from 1900 to 1949, and do end their appearances dead,
exploration and archaeology from I would have thought that they
1822 to 1945) are pushed off to ap- would make excellent model an-
pendices. (Once again there is no tagonists. Instead, we get a ge-
index or cross-referencing, and a neric Nazi Stormtrooper, a generic
minimal contents page, so organi- gangster—and seven pages of
zation is a serious issue.) And for animals. These could be useful in
some reason, a brief set of notes on pulp scenarios, but far less so than
dangerous diseases is buried in a interesting human encounters.
chapter which otherwise deals with This is possibly the book’s single
use of the cards. But there is a lot in worst error; it does very little to
here. The writing is generally rea- encourage complex character in-
sonable, with only the odd lapse, teractions.
aside from a problematic tendency But it does provide a decent
to explain game concepts from run-through of the historical pe-
scratch. As this isn’t a stand-alone riod, with short but interesting
rulebook, that is pointless at best, notes on weird events, organized
irritating at worst. crime, and major archaeological
The book does consider the and legendary sites. Any of these
question of how the system should could easily be expanded to fill a
be fitted to the genre; for example, whole book; I choked a little at the
players should start sessions with association of ‘Druidic activity’ and
more cards than in other games, Carnac, and there are some anach-
allowing them a greater range ronisms, but the page on archaeo-
of dramatic options. It also has logical technique was refreshingly
lengthy, perhaps even long-wind- down-to-earth. Better organization
ed notes on plotting and running would have been nice, though,
adventures and campaigns; these along with some discussion of
may be a trifle formulaic, but they events in the world of air travel;
cover topics that too many other this was a great age of dramatic
games barely mention. If I had to and adventurous progress in this
nit-pick, I would argue that they area, including the development
disregard the question of interac- of aerial archaeological surveys.
Reviews
The book also includes a six- head-on in the history-and-genre

page scenario with an appropri- reference-book market, but will
ate enough plot—PCs vs. cultists be concentrating on a small set
who are pinching artefacts from of game-worlds, with substantial
museums to do something nas- support for most of them. This
ty—which is rather cursory and sort of approach may work, but it
combat-oriented. I would worry depends on building a good fan-
about new players drawn to this base for the game-worlds. Indiana
game by the title; I’m not sure that Jones may well be a sound starting
they would learn enough from the point; I’m less convinced about
supplement to get the most out of Bloodshadows, which seems to lack
role-playing, and the game system the angst-laden cod psychology,
may be too fussy and complex for vengeance-driven power fantasy
beginners. or black comedy that other ‘dark’
To be fair, though, there is some games use to sell themselves. But
worthwhile material. The book’s there may be enough zombie-
sample PCs are interestingly varied, movie fans out there to prove me
although the blatant Jones-clone wrong.
archaeologist hints at the level of As for the game itself—it’s
originality; they include a movie serviceable, and the cards are a
star who has decided to try real moderately interesting twist on
adventuring, a showgirl who deals an otherwise conventional system.
in underworld information, and a The writers go on a bit, but not be-
fedora-wearing ‘mystery man’ with yond sanity. I’m unlikely to play it
a gas gun. The latter two do rather myself—there are other ‘generic’
bring out one of the book’s prob- systems which I find better writ-
lems; although it has intelligent ten and more intuitive—but it’s
notes on games based on crime- not a disaster, and it may pick up
busting and suchlike, the license a ready-made market of old Torg
makes it neglect those as compared players. But it’s not only not very
to its treatment of archaeological fashionable; it’s neither exception-
adventures. It’s an Indiana Jones ally accomplished nor especially
game-book first, a reference on the innovative. The authors have tried
inter-war period second. to combine a diligent concern for
It may be interesting to see dramatic, fast-moving narrative
what else West End does in the with extensive ‘simulationist’ me-
way of worldbooks. So far I’ve seen chanics, but the result lumbers.
just one more in the shops: Tank Good worldbooks or well-chosen
Girl, based on another Hollywood licenses could make it a success,
license—and yet another movie but it’s up against the established
tie-up is being advertised. There GURPS, and a gaggle of trendier
are also adventures and other sup- new pretenders. I wouldn’t like to
porting material for the first two. bet either way.
It looks as though MasterBook
won’t be challenging GURPS
Reviews
Rifts World Book Five: cyborgs, giant robots, magic, psy-

chic powers and humanoid mu-
Triax & The NGR tant animals this is a pretty tall
by Kevin Simbieda
order, and I’d be lying if I claimed
224 pages; $19.95
that the authors had created a sub-
tle and complex blend of exotic el-
Rifts Sourcebook Three: ements. What you get is something
Mindwerks that I first identified as being like
by Kevin Simbieda one of the back-up strips in the
112 pages; $11.95 2000 AD comic, but later realized
owes more to various genres of an-
Rifts Dimension Book ime: a setting that makes no sense
Two: Phase World at all on close examination, but
by C. J. Carella is held together by consistency of
208 pages; $19.95 style and sheer manic energy.
Because of this, it’s very diffi-
Rifts World Book Six: cult to summarize the Rifts setting
in a coherent way: there’s been a
South America magical catastrophe and the Earth
by by C.J. Carella
is now webbed with blue glowing
168 pages; $15.95
ley-lines that carry magical energy.
Where these lines cross, gateways
Rifts Mercenaries (the ‘Rifts’ of the title) open ran-
by C. J. Carella domly into other times and di-
160 pages; $15.95 mensions, allowing an immense
variety of aliens, monsters and de-
All published by Palladium mons to pass through. Most of the
Books world is demon-haunted waste-
land, but there are a few high-tech
Reviewed by Sam Dodsworth enclaves with sprawling cyberpunk
Against reason and all my better megapolises and the manufactur-
judgment, I rather like Rifts. At ing facilities to produce the inevi-
bottom it’s just another multi-gen- table energy weapons, giant ro-
re game with scary monsters and bots and cyborgs. The situation is
lots of big guns, but the original complicated by the availability of
game had real, if not always obvi- ‘mega-damage’ weapons and ar-
ous, strengths. Where games like mour: only mega-damage armour
Torg and Shadowrun simply mix can protect against mega-damage
several discrete genres to create a weapons, and a mega-damage
patchwork of clashing styles, Rifts pistol is capable of taking out a
attempts to present a distinctive concrete building. Because both
setting that can incorporate ‘cross- mega-damage items and trained
overs’ from many other genres. warriors are rare, you have the
Given that the world of Rifts mixes ideal setting for a ‘Western’ style

Reviews
campaign where a small band of elves, dwarves and orcs, and there-
PCs can take the role of wandering by ruining the setting’s consistency
gunslingers protecting villagers of style.
from bandits and petty warlords. There have been many sup-
It helps, too, that the character plements since the Rifts Conversion
classes presented in the original Book, but few with much to recom-
rulebook (yes, it’s a character- mend them. Rifts World Book Five:
class and level-based system) are Triax & The NGR, a sourcebook
interestingly quirky, varied, and for Germany and central Europe,
sufficiently detailed to qualify as represents a kind of nadir. The
‘character templates’ rather than book is two hundred and twenty-
just lists of statistics. The month- four pages long. Pages 34 to 154
old baby dragon—thirty feet long, are filled with descriptions of guns,
nearly invulnerable, and possessed robots and powered armour. This
of all the naiveté and enthusiasm is particularly inexplicable in view
of a puppy—that one of the play- of the fact that the combat system,
ers created for my first attempt although admirably fast and sim-
at a Rifts campaign stands as one ple, lacks refinements such as rules
of the most memorable (and fun) for cover, target size, or a distinc-
PCs I’ve encountered in any game. tion between short and long range
Unfortunately Rifts also has a (particularly significant when even
dark side. Although much of its the hand weapons have ranges of
strength stems from a sense that half a kilometre or more). Worse
the authors enjoy writing about yet, the material as it is presented
the setting (an unusual trait in a shows obvious signs of padding.
game of this type), it is also clear For example, the section on giant
that they enjoy creating new weap- robots begins with a list of various
ons, armour and (particularly) gi- features common to all the robots
ant robots even more. The result covered, including a paragraph on
is that although the first supple- sensor systems—a paragraph that
ment for the game (Vampire King- is repeated at the end of the de-
doms) featured useful background scription of each robot, with iden-
material, interesting NPCs and an tical wording. Nor is the rest of the
excellent, if irrelevant, section on book particularly distinguished.
travelling carnivals, subsequent Thirteen pages are taken up with
volumes have increasingly degen- two comic strips that might chari-
erated into lists of magic items and tably be described as ‘poor’, and
military equipment. Worse, this another thirty pages go on a list
enthusiasm seems not to extend to of new, mainly military, character
new monsters, with the result that, classes that are merely re-hash-
in the Rifts Conversion Book, Pal- es of material from the original
ladium took the fatal step of sim- rulebook. Take away the contents
ply importing creatures from its pages and another ten pages of
pre-existing fantasy RPG—adding weapons and robots used by the

Reviews
main group of bad guys and you’re character classes. The best thing
left with thirty-two pages of actual in the book is probably the King-
background material, including dom of Tarnow in Poland, whose
several full-page illustrations. This survival depends on a magical ar-
is scarcely going to provide the tifact that gradually and inevitably
basis for an interesting and varied corrupts its owners—not only is it
campaign. Nor are the ideas pre- quite a good idea, but the authors
sented particularly original: the have made a laudable attempt to
New German Republic (the NGR create some interesting NPCs to
of the title) is a benevolent, if au- go with the inevitable lists of weap-
thoritarian, government that per- ons.
secutes mutants and non-humans Given the title, Rifts Mercenaries
mercilessly—not a bad idea, but is pretty much what you’d expect.
one that exactly duplicates the There are a lot of new weapons and
Coalition States who are the main armoured vehicles, with more of a
American power detailed in the military feel than in previous offer-
original rulebook. ings: the emphasis is on tanks and
Rifts Sourcebook Three: Mind- aircraft rather than giant robots,
werks is a rather haphazard col- but not to the extent of the end-
lection of supplemental material less soul-destroying lists in World-
for Rifts Worldbook Five (making it book Five. The core of the book is
a supplement to a supplement— the descriptions of six mercenary
a concept that’s sadly not as unu- companies, with the focus on their
sual as it ought to be). It’s better leaders and most important per-
than its associated worldbook, sonalities. Fortunately these are
but not exactly ground-breaking. quite well done—interesting, if not
You get another sixteen pages of earth-shakingly innovative NPCs
military equipment, including a in a varied selection of outfits (one
ridiculous ‘Mobile Infantry Strike definite Good Guys, two definite
Base’ that really belongs in a range Bad Guys, and three somewhere
of cheap plastic toys, but there’s in between) that could easily be
useful material here too, includ- fitted into an existing campaign.
ing some more background detail The only real weak point is the ad-
that should really have been in the venture seeds included with each
worldbook, and three rather pe- company—these tend rather to
destrian adventure seeds (yet an- the obvious. (The mercenaries are
other evil genius from before the in trouble, and the PCs can help;
Cataclysm with a high-technology the PCs are in trouble and the
base, an evil god-being in the form mercenaries can help; the merce-
of a tree, and a race of aliens whose naries and the PCs are rivals on a
only function is to allow the referee mission…) As well as this, there’s a
to make up their own new mon- functional, if slightly perfunctory,
sters) and a reasonably imagina- points-based system for designing
tive selection of new monsters and new mercenary companies, and

Reviews
extensive notes on the basics of Comics use: a mix of spaceships,

running a mercenary campaign. magic, superpowered beings, and
There are also nine new char- as many elements of pop-culture
acter classes, mostly military spe- SF as the authors can fit in with-
cialists who could easily be created out risking lawsuits. The result is,
from existing templates or just of course, a patchwork of clichés;
improvised. All in all, a competent but that’s not necessarily a weak-
and potentially useful sourcebook, ness. With Phase World you get a
but not one that I can raise much setting that lets you recreate any
enthusiasm for. The problem is particular style of SF adventure,
that large armies and mercenary from Star Wars to Green Lantern, in
companies don’t really fit into a setting that’s distinctive enough
my own conception of the Rifts to feel like more than a bland rip-
milieu—particularly since the in- off of what’s currently popular on
clusion of proper tanks alongside television.
giant robots ruins suspension of Phase World itself is (for slightly
disbelief by demonstarting what contrived reasons) the most impor-
a stupid idea giant robots actually tant trading nexus in the known
are. Still, people who like military- universe, run by mysterious god-
style RPGs (and a quick glance like aliens who restrict visitors to a
along the shelves in any games single gigantic city, complete with
shop will show you that there are a treacherous politics in its decadent
fair few of these) will find this book upper levels, and lawless scum in
a good starting-point. its lower ones. The rest of the uni-
By contrast, Rifts Dimension verse (the ‘Three Galaxies’—the
Book Two: Phase World is a genu- author’s sense of scale seems to be a
ine return to form: which is to say little hazy) is divided into the Con-
that it’s badly organized, patchy, sortium Of Civilized Worlds (read
and over-filled with big guns and ‘Federation’), the Transgalactic
giant robots, but contains enough Empire (repressive and run by un-
good ideas to suggest that a game pleasant aliens—with a major on-
in its setting could genuinely be going Rebellion), and the United
fun. The idea behind the ‘Dimen- Worlds of Warlock (a space-faring
sion Books’ series is that each book civilization based on magic rather
presents an alternate campaign than technology, but unfortunately
setting that could easily be used in comprised mainly of dwarves and
cross-overs with Rifts proper, or as elves)—effectively a choice of three
a stand-alone campaign using the campaign styles.
Rifts rules. A similar choice of potential
Dimension Book Two is a ‘science styles is visible in the selection of
fiction’ setting, although in fact new character templates, which
even ‘space opera’ is probably too divide neatly into three groups:
strong a term; Phase World most ‘mundane’ occupations (pilots,
resembles the type of ‘cosmic’ bounty-hunters, and so on), a va-
setting that both Marvel and DC riety of aliens and specialists with
Reviews
powers that qualify them as minor- (thereby shattering the precedent

league superheroes, and a few very set by Rifts Africa and Rifts Eng-
powerful characters (including land), the material it contains is
the ‘Cosmo-Knights’—intergalac- consistently let down by bad ide-
tic champions of truth and justice as—giant robots variously built to
who aren’t anything like as bad look like dinosaurs or Greek hop-
an idea as they sound) who could lites, more dwarves and elves, in-
be used in a ‘cosmic’ superhero telligent flying mutant cats, and a
campaign. Inevitably, there’s not new character class that seems to
enough space in the book to in- exist solely to justify the cover art
clude the detail I’d like to see (and in game terms, to choose only the
too much of what there is is wasted most conspicuous.
on lists of weapons), but overall Nor, unfortunately, is it com-
Phase World manages to capture plete: space restrictions mean that
the same energy and sense of pos- a number of sections have been
sibilities as the original Rifts game. left for a second volume, but the
Rifts World Book Six: South text is still littered with references
America, by contrast, includes all to the missing material. Still, it’s
the necessary elements for a good a relief to see another new Rifts
Rifts supplement without ever supplement that actually contains
quite managing to be one. De- more background material than
spite the considerable advantage weapons statistics. I, for one, hope
of an author who actually knows that Palladium Books will continue
something about South America this upward trend.
Mystic China tions are met is it worth bothering

By Erick Wujcik with petty carping about authen-
Palladium Books ticity and detail.
208pp; $19.95 It was a genuine pleasure to
discover that Mystic China demon-
Reviewed by Paul Mason strates an infectious enthusiasm
Mystic China is a sourcebook for a for China in its author. Here is
modern campaign involving the someone who has watched alto-
supernatural, based on Chinese gether too many Hong Kong mar-
culture. For me, there are two tial arts flicks. However, he hasn’t
essential things to look for in a allowed his ideas to be restricted
role-playing game about another by them, but has delved a little
culture. The first is whether the deeper, especially into the world
author has a genuine sense of en- of Daoism, to supplement the na-
thusiasm for that culture, the sec- ïve excitement of Kung Fu with the
ond is whether they have commu- more sophisticated mythology un-
nicated it. Only if these two condi- derlying it.

Reviews
There are, of course, several one of them. Such shoddiness in

unfortunate aspects to this book. approach may be lost on readers
The first is that it isn’t a self-con- with only a superficial interest in
tained role-playing game. I’d been China, but it’s a pity, as it’s so un-
looking forward to seeing how necessary.
Erick Wujcik tackled the field: I Slightly more forgivable are the
wanted to see if the champion of crimes against the Chinese lan-
dicelessness could make it work guage. Faced with a difficult prob-
in the Chinese background, and lem—the variety of spoken forms
an emphasis on philosophical of Chinese and the different ro-
Daoism suggested possibilities. manization methods—Erick Wu-
Sadly, it’s just a supplement for jcik has taken the laziest way out.
the trashy Palladium Ninjas and He has just written any Chinese
Superspies game, a disposable ef- word the way he found it. Thus Pu-
fort exploiting weapon fetishism, tonghua (‘standard speech’, based
fascination with Japan (though not on a northern dialect) written in
right down to the Japanese peo- the modern pinyin system sits
ple) and ignorance about the Ori- next to Cantonese; next to more
ent. In this context, Mystic China’s Putonghua in a modified form of
exhortations to the readers to be the older Wade-Giles or Yale sys-
sure that they realize China is not tems; next to words plucked from
the same as Japan—and the au- Japanese or one of the Indian
thor’s refreshingly honest admis- languages. It means that although
sion that he himself used to make there are a lot of Chinese names
the same mistake—are particularly and words in this book, they are to-
welcome. tally useless for any use other than
Unfortunately this is undercut the most superficial; and worse,
by several factors. One is the cover. the book is peddling misinforma-
Very pretty it is, too, with its blonde tion. Chinese is relatively difficult
dressed in a kimono and gripping to pronounce, but here it’s made
a katana, its martial artist with two impossible even to get close. The
kama, its tsuba, its … Hey, wait a author claims to have taken this
minute, where are we? Looks like route out of a desire for ‘simplic-
Japan to me, but how would I ity’. Well, it isn’t simple. It’s a mess.
know? I only live there. If you want simplicity, why use so
A good feature of the interior, many Chinese words and why of-
on the other hand, is the occa- fer a spurious ‘Chinese’ glossary?
sional use of Chinese ideographs But hey, what about the role-
to convey the atmosphere. A bad playing stuff? Well, the problem
feature is the inept calligraphy of is that the role-playing content is
these ideographs (in one case, be- based on the creaky old Palladium
ing printed upside-down). There systems, complete with all those
are cheap and convenient ways of outmoded concepts like character
getting perfect Chinese writing. classes, levels, alignment, TLAs
Palladium should have employed and … dice. If you’re a devoted
Reviews
player of Ninjas and Superspies, I’m ever. He doesn’t sparkle quite so

sure this is fine and hunky-dory, much when presenting sample
but for the casual reader with an dialogue to convey the atmos-
interest in the subject matter, it phere—too much of his dialogue
means you have to wade through has no atmosphere but that of a
all kinds of gobbledegook to get standard bunch of violence-prone
a handle on the author’s ideas western players— but the rest gets
about qi, Daoism and the serried good marks for inventiveness.
ranks of Chinese demons. It also There are many things I could
lumbers the book with the typical carp about: the potential for cock-
Palladium ‘never mind the qual- ups in presenting details of four-
ity, feel the width’ approach, ac- teen new Chinese martial arts is
cording to which, the quality of obvious, but I think the criticisms
a game is in direct proportion to which are most valid are those
the number of monsters, character where Wujick has contradicted the
classes, spells or martial arts pre- conventions of the fictional genre
sented. Reading the entertaining he’s representing. For example, al-
descriptions of demons and the though he offers the ‘capitalist En-
like, I don’t get the impression trepreneur’ as a potential charac-
that Wujcik necessarily subscribes ter class, he fails to point out that
to this view himself, but the book such a person tends to have shit-
is certainly being sold on this idea. hot martial artists as bodyguards.
The details on demons are a However, such criticisms are
fine example of the author’s tal- few and far between, and are out-
ent for bullshitting his way past weighed by successes. Despite the
holes in his knowledge. Although necessity of tying the magic to the
he boasts of reading ‘a couple of clunky Palladium system, he has
hundred’ books in research for the done very well in representing
game, he apparently hadn’t read many aspects of Chinese magic,
them very closely—as for example, such as the projection of ‘Living
in the case of Deng Ming Dao’s ex- Qi’. In particular, this closely fol-
cellent The Wandering Taoist, which lows the traditional wu xia Flying
he seems to think is an autobiog- Swordsman stories which you can
raphy, rather than the fictional- see in such works as the movie Zu:
ized biography it is clearly intro- Warriors of the Magic Mountain, and
duced as. There are holes in his the book Blades From the Willows
knowledge a mile wide—not least (which appears in the bibliography:
in the areas of Daoism, which has obviously the author paid attention
particularly seized his imagination when he was reading that). His por-
and provided the major inspira- trayal of the Yama Kings and Hell,
tion for the book. However, he has along with the mysteries of the af-
an admirable ability to create plau- terlife, is a little too strongly influ-
sible background, whether it be for enced by Christian assumptions for
the above-mentioned demons, or my liking. This Christian-derived
martial arts, or qi powers, or what- naïvety about such things as the
Reviews
positive and negative connotations martial artist nor an alchemist?

of Yin and Yang affect other areas But what about the Confucian
of the book. But the section on Chi- legacy of values, which shaped (by
nese Alchemy more than makes opposition) the values of the Dao-
up for these failings. It’s a detailed ists? Nothing. What about Bud-
and imaginative interpretation of dhist magic? Nothing. What about
a broad and variously described a map of Hong Kong, even? Noth-
tradition. The main sources seem ing. There’s a second sourcebook
to be the aforementioned books due out sometime, though….
Blades From the Willows and The Despite the author’s obvious
Wandering Taoist (the first of a tril- enthusiasm, this is a shoddy prod-
ogy compiled as Chronicles of Tao). uct. Without any background on
There is one major omission China, it’s nothing more than a
from this book, however; there is glorified list of spells, monsters
nothing about China. Incredible and martial arts. If he was going to
as it sounds, amid all the bumf go for such a narrow scope (focus-
about Daoism, Infernals and Mar- ing almost exclusively on Daoism)
tial Arts there is nothing about the the author should have followed
nation that spawned it all. There through properly, set the game in
are references to the Jade Emper- Hong Kong and/or Taiwan, and
or, but nothing resembling an ex- chosen one language to use for the
planation of Chinese religion (the names. As it is, the imagination
broad church of myths followed by and research are almost entirely
ordinary people). There’s nothing wasted because of the mush with
about Buddhism. There’s no more which they are blended. A shame,
than a brief mention of Confucius. as there’s a really good game hid-
Why is this? Could it be because ing under it all. And even if it was
Confucius was neither a master diceless, I’d probably love it.
Thoan: Les faiseurs est publishers. The company has

d’univers released several French RPGs as
by Leonidas and Orso well as translations of English
Vesperini and American games. Their latest
Descartes Editeur product is Thoan, based on Philip
430 pages; FF295 José Farmer’s World of Tiers series.
The rulebook is quite impres-
sive: a 430-page hardback, sport-
Reviewed by Patrice Mermoud ing a cover by W. Siudmak—the
France has produced quite a num- same illustration as on the cover of
ber of role-playing games since the first of the World of Tiers books
1985: Descartes Editeur (formerly in the present French edition. The
Jeux Descartes) is one of the larg- layout, although not outstanding,

Reviews
is correct and clear. The interior evoted to presenting the world,

d
illustrations, all done by one artist, the basic ideas behind role-playing
range from quite nice to just aver- and some of the game’s rules via
age, but convey the feeling of the a solo-game scenario. The idea is
game. The only real drawback is the that this will enable new players
map of the World of Tiers, which to quickly learn the basic ideas be-
the colouring has made nearly un- hind the game. The game system
readable, and quite useless. fills the next 60 pages, followed by
The setting involves several the character creation rules.
worlds, created and ruled by pow- The latter goes on for 50 pag-
erful beings called the Thoans, es, mainly devoted to the 20 tem-
which are linked by ‘gates’, the plates, covering most of the inhab-
secret of which is jealously kept by itants of the World of Tiers. Some
each Thoan lord. The novels deal of these are descendents of ancient
with the adventures of Jadawin, human civilizations or human
one of these Thoans, and Kicka- travellers brought to the Thoan
ha, a human sent to the World of world by accident; others are hu-
Tiers. Farmer has been a Tarzan manoids, animals, or Thoans.
fan since childhood, and the in- Each of these templates is pre-
fluence of Edgar Rice Burroughs sented on two facing pages, com-
is obvious throughout the books. plete with illustration, description,
Some of the Thoans’ private attributes, skills and possessions.
worlds are deserts, while others This method of presenting charac-
are populated by people and crea- ters is especially suitable for inexpe-
tures brought from other ‘dimen- rienced gamers. There are no real
sions’ of which the Earth is one. character creation rules, although
The Thoans themselves love and experienced players should have
trust each other so much that they no difficulty in coming up with new
make Roger Zelazny’s Amberites templates. Some of these veterans
look like the Cartwright family. may find that the whole idea of
Thoan, the basic rulebook, con- templates limits the scope of their
cerns itself with Jadawin’s world characters unnecessarily.
and its inhabitants. This planet The character’s attributes are
looks like a Tower of Babel, with the standard ones used in nearly
circular levels surrounding a cen- all role-playing games, rated on
tral mountain, at the top of which a 1-6 scale. Since the rules need
lies the Lord’s citadel. (This is the to describe everything from the
‘World of Tiers’ of the title.) The mass of an atom to the mass of
other worlds described in the nov- the Solar System, a second aspect,
els (Urizen’s trap world, Red Orc’s Scale, is added. Each attribute will
Earths, the Lavalite World) will be thus be cited as something like:
covered in future supplements. Strength–3.5 meaning strength
From the start, Thoan is aimed of 5 on the third scale—the hu-
at the beginner. 30 pages are man one. These values are used

Reviews
throughout the game for action and James Bond were cautious
resolutions—the rules cover op- and unlucky. The hero points rules
posing attributes from different simulate the mood of the novels.
scales, although in practice most The second half of the rule-
conflict will be between characters book (240 pages) is a sourcebook
whose abilities are on the same for Farmer’s novels. Each of the
scale as each other. The game levels of Jadawin’s world is de-
system relies on a couple of basic scribed in great detail. The game
systems, described in just half a designers have compiled every bit
dozen pages. of information they found in the
One of the designers of Thoan, novels and filled in details which
Leonidas Vesperini, translated the Farmer left blank. So where Farmer
second edition of Shadowrun for just mentions the Atlantean tier of
Descartes a few years ago. Not sur- the Jadawin’s fortress, but says next
prisingly then, one feels the inspi- to nothing about it, the rulebook
ration of Shadowrun in the design spends 30 pages describing it.
of Thoan. Every action is resolved Any French-literate Farmer fan
by throwing six-sided dice (the would probably find the wealth of
number of dice depending on the information invaluable, the way
Attribute being tested) and trying the Lucas-lovers were delighted by
to beat a difficulty number, with the information in the Star Wars
each die equal to or above this source-books West End Games
number counting as a success. The published a few years ago. The
number of successes indicates the rulebook is very well indexed,
quality of the result. Unfortunate- something that should be manda-
ly, a few ‘improvements’ have been tory for any book this size but is of-
made to this basic principle, which ten forgotten by the designers and
only complicate matters. publishers.
Shadowrun used Karma points Unfortunately, there are a few
to help characters beat some other- problems with the game, all linked
wise insurmountable odds. Thoan to the combat system which is dice-
uses ‘Hero points’ for much the heavy and tedious to operate. To
same purpose. Players use these simulate heroic deeds and complex
points to re-roll dice or get auto- simultaneous action, the designers
matic successes. Since players get chose to base the game around an
these points back at the end of the order-sheet system. At the begin-
adventure, there is no incentive for ning of each round, players roll
them to save them: they are en- for their character’s initiative. This
couraged to act heroically, to take initiative decides how many ‘action
chances with daring manoeuvres ranks’ each character will get in the
and brave deeds. coming round. Then each player
As I said before, Farmer is a fan fills an ‘intention sheet’ describing
of Rice Burroughs, and his own what the character will do on each
heroes (notably Kickaha) would of their action ranks. Action ranks
probably think that Indiana Jones are then counted (back from 10 to
Reviews
1) by the referee, and every time that they are using rules: but the
an appropriate rank is reached, designers of Thoan obviously don’t
the player must tell the referee see it that way.
what their character will do. If this Of course, a good referee could
involves an attempt to hit an op- overcome this problem, but since
ponent, it will be an opportunity to the game is supposed to be suit-
role large numbers of dice. There able for beginners, this is really
can be up to six rolls for each at- no excuse, especially given that
tempt, plus a Stamina roll at the the ‘advice to referees’ chapter
end of the round! can only be considered sketchy: six
The order-sheet system has pages, followed by an overview of
been tried before in RPGs, and the novels. When one compares
in some board games like Yaquin- these few pages to some other
to’s Swashbuckler, but considering games not even intended for nov-
the current trend towards rules- ice gamers, it becomes clear that
light, story-oriented role-playing only an experienced referee can
games, it’s hard to see how going hope to run this game successfully.
back to wargame-inspired rules Although Thoan fails as an en-
can help beginners understand try-level game, experienced gam-
role-playing games. If you want ers who would like to play in a tru-
to encourage new gamers, it’s best ly heroic RPG could definitely do
to let them without even realizing much worse than take a look at it.
Fantasy Earth: quote from the company’s pro-

motional materials, Fantasy Earth
Basic Rules is ‘a world of realistic, gritty, low-
by Michael C. Zody
fantasy role-playing, where even
Zody Games
mighty warriors fear a knife in the
122 pages; $15.00
back and great wizards get nervous
around loaded crossbows’.
Fantasy Earth: My first impression of the
The Book of Magic game was less than thrilling. The
by Michael C. Zody artwork and design is typical of
Zody Games the sort of role-playing games be-
148 pages; $15.00 ing published in the early 1980s,
and looks very old-fashioned and
Reviewed by Ken Walton unappealing compared to today’s
These two volumes form the core glossy, finished products.
of a new generic fantasy game sys- The concept, too, seemed
tem. The other two volumes, not strange. Does the world need an-
yet published, are The Game Mas- other gritty, realistic, generic fan-
ter’s Guide and Designer’s Notes. To tasy system? It seemed as if the au-

Reviews
thor had played AD&D, decided it to read. And the author was right.
wasn’t realistic enough and tried This is, without doubt, the most
to solve the problem by writing mind-numbingly boring RPG I
his own system, instead of look- have ever read, and I like reading
ing at what else was on the market. RPGs! Rule follows rule, with no
Surely, if you want gritty, realistic lightening of tone at any point,
fantasy without the baggage of a and no examples to give the first-
world background, GURPS: Ba- time reader any grasp of what’s
sic Set would do, or Role Master or supposed to be going on.
RuneQuest or … What, in any case, So I decided to skim it, rather
is a generic, realistic fantasy sys- than reading every word, so that I
tem? Once you’ve defined a magic could at least get some overview of
system and an economy, you have the book. It seems a character has
at least a sketch of a world, or at fourteen main Abilities generated
least a type of world you’re limited at random and then allocated by
to. On this front Fantasy Earth may the player. (Anyone who wants to
actually be less generic and more play a magic user has also to gen-
limiting than AD&D. erate a further twelve Abilities.) A
Despite these misgivings, I de- character must choose a character
cided to give it the benefit of the class (warrior, ranger, burglar, sor-
doubt and actually read it. The in- cerer, shaman or cleric) or a mix
troduction gave me a sinking feel- of a number of them. This gives
ing. A single quotation will show the game a rather traditional,
what I mean: stodgy feel, despite the fact that
Some may find the rules a little the character class is only for ini-
dry and not exactly an exciting tial generation. The player has a
read. If so, I apologize. certain number of points to put
However, they are rules. One
into skills, most of which must
of the most frustrating things,
to me is to buy a game which be put into skills related to their
is a great read and then you character’s class, and the rest are
realize you cannot actually for background skills. There are
figure out how to apply half no less than 138 skills in the book,
the rules. I would rather have mostly described in great detail.
the game be easy to play and Rolling against skills is similar to
hard to read than the other the system in White Wolf games—
way round (I hope it turned roll 1d10, add your skill level and
out easy to read and easy to
compare it to a target number.
play, but sometimes you cannot
have everything) … The game Once we get onto combat, how-
has been criticized as being too ever, the system changes. Now we
heavy on math. I hope people have to roll 2d10 and add them to-
will not be scared off by this … gether. There are lots of modifiers
And so on. here, as you might expect in a ‘grit-
With this warning in mind, ty, realistic’ system, and a couple of
and calculator in hand, I began pages of Wound Description tables

Reviews
of the ‘broken bones and inter- will be given a combination

nal haemorrhaging’ type. By this of five ability scores. Certain
time, my eyes were glazing over. scores are weighted more than
I noticed a couple of pages about others. In no case will there
be more than three separate
money, some stuff about effects of
ability scores used in a single
weather on characters, lots of pag-
aptitude, and one of the ability
es of weapons and equipment. scores will be counted at least
On to The Book of Magic. What three times in the aptitude.
do we have here? 22 pages of mag- Got that?
ic rules, and 136 pages of spell lists. I started out with a fairly clear
All written in the same turgid style. idea of my character, but by the
OK, I thought, I’ll give it one time I’d ploughed through pages
last chance. I’ll generate a char- of this stuff I had lost it completely.
acter or two and see how the me- The worst of it was, there was no
chanics work by rolling a few dice. example of a character being gen-
So I started on the character generated, and there was no example
eration. How do I generate the of a finished character sheet to
main Abilities? Roll 3d10 for each, look at, to give me any idea of what
and average the result. Fourteen the numbers ought to look like.
times—or twenty-six times for a I gave up on character genera-
mage. There’s a little table so you tion. Perhaps I was just tired; I’d
don’t have to do all the calcula- try again tomorrow. Five times I
tion yourself. I did that, I picked tried to generate a character, and
my character class (a Ranger), I each time ground to a halt in a
did some calculations based on my welter of figures, averages, tables,
Size and Strength to get my height levels, effective levels, modifiers
and weight. Then I came to skills. and aptitudes.
I ought to mention at this Finally I decided that life is too
point that as well as providing a short to learn to play Fantasy Earth,
character sheet, the game pro- even if the world needs another
vides a character worksheet, which generic fantasy system. Which it
allows you to fill in the results of all doesn’t. Personally, I would rather
the calculations necessary before go up against a Shoggoth bare-
transferring the finished figures to handed than try to run a game in
your final character sheet. this system. It may well play better
Skills. That should be easy. So than it looks, but how on earth is
I start reading. In order to under- anyone ever going to find out?
stand how skills work, it seems I’ve Fantasy Earth has defeated my
got to understand Aptitudes. Back ability to give a game the benefit
a few pages: of the doubt. It really is a dull, tedi-
Aptitudes are the backbone ous set of rules which would have
of the Fantasy Earth system … sunk without trace even if released
For each skill, the aptitude in 1980. Sigh.

Reviews
West Point Extra- the Chevlii who are a race of para-

sites who use other sentient beings
Planetary Academy as hosts. Most people are going to
by Oscar Clarke and David find it very hard not to translate
Hankins this sort of thing straight back into
Star Trek terms.
Equilibrium Games Having said that, the UFR
About 100 pages; £5.00? seems to have a little more prag-
matism and common sense than
the Federation. Specific crews are
Reviewed by Andrew Rilstone given specific mandates for spe-
West Point Academy is a ‘hand-made’ cific missions, rather than impos-
100-page, A5 stapled booklet—or, ing a monolithic Prime Directive.
as we used to call it, a fanzine. Giv- A crew under an Article Three
en that a new freelance designer’s mandate would be alowed to ob-
chance of having their role-playing serve an uncontacted planet, but
game published by an established not interfere or reveal their pres-
games company is virtually nil, it ence to them, whereas an Article
makes a lot of sense for a group Eight mandate would allow a crew
of gamers with some new ideas to to arrange intervention ‘accord-
self-publish in this way. ing to precise terms laid down in
The authors of West Point have the context of the decree’. We are
certainly got some ideas: the book told that an Article Nine mandate,
is clearly an attempt to turn a per- permitting a crew to do essentially
sonal, slightly idiosyncratic and what the hell it likes, has only been
rather interesting campaign into invoked on two occasions.
a role-playing system. That is the So far, so unoriginal: but the
book’s strength, and, in the final authors do have one very Good
analysis, its weakness as well. Idea. The player characters are
Although the authors can’t say not the crew of a starship, but ca-
so, for obvious reasons, West Point dets, newly enrolled at West Point
is to all intents and purposes a Academy. The Forward (sic) says
Star Trek role-playing game. It’s that ‘With West Point we play out the
the future. The human race is experiences of characters that will
part of a United Federal Repub- become the heroes of future sto-
lic of planetary civilizations. The ries.’ A West Point ‘campaign’ would
UFR runs a Defence Expedition- follow a set of cadets through their
ary Force whose job it is to explore five years at the Academy—start-
the boundaries of known space, ing with their fresher year, during
or to carry out patrol or security which they can expect to be sub-
missions, to explore strange new jected to hazing and initiations (or
worlds and boldly go. Of course, ‘bullying’ as it is quaintly called in
there are non-human races out civvy street), through to the one-
there, too. Like the Foratians, a year tour of a ctive duty at the end
piratical military dictatorship, and of their course.
Reviews
This is a neat idea in itself: one the game is based on a perfectly

of the drawbacks of Trek-influenced serviceable difficulty number sys-
RPGs in the past has been that the tem that could be explained in two
player characters have got to be paragraphs. Given the game’s em-
highly skilled and omni-compe- phasis on the solving of dilemmas,
tent: how else would they get to be it might have been better if it had
starship captains? Yet, as every ref- spent more space on, say, charac-
eree knows, half the fun of an RPG ter traits, and less worrying about
is to watch the inventive ways PCs action points and initiative.
find of making a complete mess of There is a fair amount of back-
things. The excellent twist, from a ground information in the game,
role-playing point of view, is that mostly done well. The emphasis
much of one’s training at the acad- is on the workings of the DEF,
emy takes the form of simulated rather than on, say, the politics of
missions on what is carefully not the UFR as a whole. Data on the
called the holo-deck. Thus, the ref- various alien races is particularly
eree gets to run a large number of sparse, and there are no descrip-
adventures, set in a large number tions of interesting planets or star
of different situations: you could maps. I can see that the infor-
be the crew of a warship one week mation about the departmental
and a way station the next. These structures of Way Stations and Star
adventures are not ‘real’, but they Ships, and about the ranks of the
are significant, since a crew of ca- DEF and the various UFR man-
dets who get wiped out or trigger dates is going to be important in
off a major interstellar war will get a game about military characters;
low marks on their course and face but more general information
a chewing-out from their tutor. would have given referees a jump-
The game is also supposed ing-off point for scenarios.
to deal with day-to-day life at the The scenarios themselves are
academy and social interaction the game’s major disappointment.
with other cadets. The authors Three of them are examples of
suggest this should be kept down- ‘tests’: simple scenarios that are
to-earth since ‘it is often more in- intended to evaluate a cadet’s re-
teresting to save your clean wash- sponse to a given situation. In each
ing than to save the universe a case, the situation is basically un-
dozen times’. In the hands of a solvable. For example, you might
skilled referee, I don’t doubt that be cast in the role of the captain
this is true, but I wish there had who has to get a Cheveli officer
been more clues about how a ref- to a peace conference in order to
eree might pull this off in practice. avert a war. The Cheveli’s host has
Given the relative brevity of the died, so you have to chose one of
rulebook, I thought rather a lot of the five crew-members and passen-
space was spent on an unnecessar- gers on your ship (played by the
ily fussy rules system, even though other cadets) to become the new

Reviews
host. There is no one ‘solution’ to campaign, and run it successfully;

this dilemma: the interest is in de- but they have not sufficiently con-
veloping the characters by seeing veyed the information that will
how they react to it. In case we had allow someone else to run it. The
missed the point, one of the tests is referees’ notes, in particular, are
called the ‘Korbyite—Marooned!’ risible: the very brief beginners’
adventure. (If you don’t get that, guide tells us that ‘if you expect
then trust me—you aren’t enough the PCs to be clever they will seem
of a trekkie to enjoy the game!) to be very dense indeed, but if you
The idea of these test scenar- assume they won’t come up with
ios is quite a good one, and they a clever ploy, you might find your
proved very enjoyable to play in story ending before it has really
the demonstration game that the begun’, without any hints of how
authors ran at European Gen Con. to find ways out of this dilemma.
However, the information provided We also get a seven-point guide
in the rulebook is superficial in the to pseudo-science including ‘3:
extreme: the above example runs Energy is always conserved, never
to barely three hundred words! destroyed, it just changes form …
Even worse are the examples 6: The UFR knows more about
of adventures set in the real world: physics than we do, so if it sounds
some referees might be able to plausible let it work.’ Hmm …
improvise a scenario about a first- The first edition of the game is
week-of-term Toga party, given in- said to be a limited edition of 200
formation like ‘The missing Lamb- copies. If Equilibrium is going to
das [one of the fraternities] now go for a second edition, I would
arrive, all wearing togas, and start advise the designers to simplify the
interrupting every couple and try- rules system, and provide a much
ing to dance with each other-sexed larger selection of much better
being, all at once’, but most are go- fleshed-out adventures. Since all
ing to need a lot more help, sug- the cadets follow the same course,
gestions, and nudges in the right it ought to be possible to provide
direction. (And in any case, do we all the tests and missions experi-
believe that these cadets—the elite enced by first-year students—leav-
of their planets—are going to turn ing the sophomores to be covered
into the cast of Animal House once in a supplement.
they arrive at the academy?) Even as it stands, the game is
There is the problem with the a reasonable first publication by
game, in a nutshell. It is obvi- some new authors, of which they
ous that the writers have run this can feel pretty proud.

Letters
Nephilim
Donald H. Frew, USA
In his review of Nephilim in IF#2, ‘Orichalka’, the magical metal
Brian Duguid wrote: that can damage and even slay
Despite the claim by a ‘wiccan Nephilim, is derived from ‘orichal-
elder’ on the back cover that cum’. In the Critias (ix.), Plato
Nephilim ‘skilfully blends real- tells us that this mythical metal
world occult knowledge with (‘orichalc’) was known only to the
… [a] role-playing game’ …
Atlanteans and valued more than
Many concepts fundamental
anything save gold, while Pliny
to the game’s fictional
magic—Ka, Orichalka, and (xxxiv. 2) says that this metal (‘au-
the Nephilim themselves—are richalcum’) no longer exists. For
entirely original and feature more information on this and oth-
in no occult tradition I’ve ever er mythical and magical metals, I
read. refer you to The Book of the Sword by
Forgive me, Mr. Duguid, but to be Richard F. Burton (Dover, 1987). It
blunt, that’s why I’m a wiccan El- does not seem too large a stretch
der and you’re not. to turn a mythical Atlantean metal
‘Ka’, the magical essence of into a magical one for the sake of
a Nephilim, is derived from the a game.
Egyptian concept of ‘ka’. While The ‘Nephilim’ themselves
in ordinary humans ‘ka’ can be are derived from the ‘Nephelin’
rendered as ‘soul’, more or less, or ‘Nefilim’ of Hebrew lore. Men-
in gods and god-like beings (e.g. tioned briefly in Genesis 6 as the
the Nephilim) ‘ka’ becomes the es- ‘sons of God’ who mated with the
sence of magic. Thus, in Papyrus ‘daughters of men’, they are de-
BM 10188 (col.27/5-6), the sun- scribed in some detail in the apoc-
god Re declares that ‘Magic is my ryphal and apocalyptic Book of
ka.’ There is an excellent discus- Enoch (or Enoch I). Here they are
sion of this meaning of ‘ka’ and its some sort of cross between fallen
relation to the magic-god Heka, in angels, giants and Titans, who are
The Mechanics of Ancient Egyp- immortal, interact with humans
tian Magical Practice by Robert on a regular basis, and practise
Krietch Ritner (University of Chi- and teach a multitude of magical
cago Press, 1993). arts and occult sciences. Enoch I
Letters
reads so much like a human his- tering review after reading Mr

tory of the Nephilim of the game, Rilstone’s alarmist description of
that I included it in the ‘very ac- the damage done to the role-play-
curate listing of real-world magical ing establishment by the authors
grimoires’ on p.136 of the game, of Nephilim, of whom I am one.
that Mr Duguid so admired. (I This did not leave me predisposed
must say that, given Mr Duguid’s to a dispassionate appraisal of
tone and attitude, I am surprised the review. I agree that Nephilim
that he would so describe a list that has flaws—a beginning adventure
includes the Necronomicon!) would have helped the rules book
I am sorry if I am being harsh, immeasurably—but I stand by my
but I read Mr Duguid’s unflat- endorsement on the back cover.
White Wolf Games

Ben Chessel,
Melbourne, Australia
In an otherwise excellent review of ity of White Wolf products, because
White Wolf ’s Wraith: The Oblivion, the proponents of those types of
Sam Dodsworth describes Were- chronicles are the ones who buy
wolf: The Apocalypse as ‘Dungeons & the supplements. Thus the volu-
Dragons for eco-terrorists’. This is minous body of material (of vary-
a prime example of an incomplete ing quality) which supports the
understanding of an excellent games is skewed unfairly toward a
game about spirituality, tragedy, market which represents only one
heroic struggle and a dying earth, approach to the games.
which is, I am afraid, typical of the White Wolf has been very suc-
treatment that White Wolf games cessful and some people might
have received from some writers tend to resent that. Any gaming
in IF. company knows how difficult it is
The Storyteller games can all to maintain a working budget with
be played a number of ways. They such a small readership. White
can be sophisticated, elegant en- Wolf has managed to become and
gines for creating poignant and remain successful and this has
mem-orable narratives. The play- generated a certain amount of
ers who use the games this way jealousy. The people at the compa-
probably do not buy much other ny are also sometimes guilty, I feel,
material to use with their games, of exacerbating these feelings—by
relying instead on their own im- adopting a somewhat superior at-
aginations, sparked off by the rich titude to other types of games.
backgrounds of the White Wolf I have heard Jennifer Hart-
worlds. But they can also be played shorn, the Vampire line-developer,
as games about super-heroes with complain about the difficulties in-
street cred. This is the style of play herent in changing the direction
which is supported by the major- of a line of financially successful
Letters
gaming products. This is a good changed the gaming world, and

example of White Wolf becom- made its mark very clearly. The
ing a victim of its own success. author of the review of Wraith ap-
To maintain its high sales it must pears to have considered only the
pitch its material at the largest more popularized view of how
slice of the market—and this is Werewolf works.
not the slice which wants sophisti- Perhaps in future, critics of the
cated, quality product. It is all too company might examine more
easy to attack White Wolf ’s weak closely their motives and consider
points, and equally easy to ignore making their comments more con-
its strengths. The company has structive.
Women In Gaming
Phil Masters, UK
As the author of GURPS: Arabian Of course, as you said, this
Nights I was naturally interested may be tied up with the fact that
by your editorial comments about the ‘Arabian Nights’ genre is in-
the game’s cover. The artwork herently a man’s world, but I’m
was originally painted by the (fe- not completely sure. It is true that
male) artist for a completely differ- the original tales were primarily
ent book (a fantasy novel); Steve coffee-house entertainments for
Jackson Games then purchased all-male audiences, but the genre
second-use rights. I have to admit has transformed into something a
that I was entirely happy with it, little more complex today. There
although I had no particular say in are plenty of ‘Arabian’ fantasies on
the process. the market written and widely read
It is, to be sure, an all-male pic- by women.
ture, but given the book’s subject, I don’t claim my supplement
it could conceivably have featured as particularly sophisticated in its
female characters dressed in a way treatment of either female charac-
that would have done my feminist ters or ‘female themes’, but I did
credibility no good whatsoever. make a few token attempts to ad-
Less probably, it could have fea- dress such topics, including notes
tured harem-women clad in gar- on ‘Harem Campaigns’, in which
ments that I would have known to female characters and a minority
be more historically plausible, but of males would concern themselves
which would have confused most more with politics and social rela-
buyers. At the risk of being actions than with physical violence.
cused of moral cowardice, I think I don’t know if anyone has taken
that the picture (which I regard as this idea up, but I persist in think-
a pretty fair piece of fantasy art on ing that it has potential; I mention
its own terms) is as good as I could it here to demonstrate that even
have hoped for. the most seemingly ‘masculine’

Letters
genres have potential for the kind reduce the male/female ‘way of
of handling you discuss. doing things’ to the binary oppo-
I think you were a little too sition of nurturing/fighting falls
abrupt in your dismissal of female back some way behind recent sci-
characters cross-dressing, as sug- entific discourse. Feminist Theory
gested in Space: 1889. As a number in the age of post structuralism
of feminist historians have pointed tends to view gender and even
out with enthusiasm, this has been sex as constructed. The construc-
a more common phenomenon tion of ‘the female character’ is
throughout real-world history than constantly redefined by society
one might expect; virtually every and even science. What does ‘fe-
all-male army or navy throws up maleness’ mean? Is it connected to
instances of cross-dressed females, ‘womanhood’? I think one would
sometimes remaining in disguise be better advised to divide not be-
for years and establishing success- tween man and woman, but to dif-
ful careers. It’s a limiting approach ferentiate along the lines of ‘male-
for a game character, and perhaps specific’ or ‘female-specific’ behav-
modern female players would of- iour, which may exist in different
ten regard it as too demeaning, shares in both men and women
but I have seen it adopted (in an and which has to do with our his-
‘Arabian Nights’ game, by a female tory and society.
player), and I think the subject de- The main thing which differ-
serves a little more consideration entiates destructive games from
than it is usually given. non-destructive ones is the de-
gree of responsibility players have
Jan Henrik Wagner to take for their surroundings. If
Frankfurt, Germany they have to control a community,
With reference to your editorial as, for example, Ars Magica cov-
concerning the women in role- enants, they develop a surprising
playing, I think you underesti- degree of peacefulness, ‘motherly
mated female players greatly. To instincts’ and social relationships.
Reviews
Phil Masters, UK
I found myself in some, rather that can easily be resolved, and
hypocritical, sympathy with Jona- I’d be more than a little worried if
than Tweet’s comments in issue 3, IF took to insisting on play-test re-
concerning reviews written with- ports for every review it commis-
out play of the game involved. On sions. Once upon a time, when
the other hand, as Jonathan has I was asked onto the inevitable
to admit, this is not something ‘Writing for Publication’ panels

Letters
at games shows, my stock joke tive set of concepts to a sceptical

announcement was ‘Never play- and semi-willing bunch of play-
test scenarios—it’ll only bias your ers—who might quite like it after
judgement’. I eventually dropped another month or so. (Conversely,
this line, partly because I was get- the group might love the game at
ting bored with it, but also be- first, and only come to recognize
cause it was sounding hollow and its inherent, overwhelming flaws
embarrassing. I have instigated after that month.)
or assisted with various sorts of On the other hand, too many
play-testing over the years, and games reviews do show the lack of
at times it has been fruitful, or play-testing—and IF is a long way
at least interesting. However, the from the worst in this. The usual
joke had a point. problem seems to be reviewers
Many editors can no doubt who fall in love with some flashy,
tell stories of scenario submis- unusual game at first sight, and
sions they’ve sent back as unplay- write their review before the end of
able, only to meet the reply, ‘But the first flush of passion, let alone
it worked fine for my group’. To a decent playtest. Conversely, a few
which the correct response is: reviews are written by people who
‘Good—now rewrite it for all the simply have not grasped what a
other groups out there’. The prob- game is about. (Not that play-test-
lem being, of course, that a playing will necessarily help with that.)
test can only involve one bunch of This comes down to the fact
players, with one referee, who they that reviews are subjective things,
know, and there is probably no and this is a very idiosyncratic hob-
such thing as a ‘typical’ or ‘aver- by with even fewer objective crite-
age’ playing group. ria than most. All that IF’s review-
With a new game, the test could ers can hope to achieve is to say
be particularly unfair, as a review- something interesting, moderately
er struggles in haste to introduce informative and a little bit percep-
what may be a blazingly innovative in as deft a way as possible.

Obituary
Nigel D, Findley
1959–1995
In the weeks since Nigel’s death, I have struggled to put words on paper.
The very thought of writing is tied to the memory of him; he was the
definition of a professional writer. Everything I could write about him
strikes me as a pale imitation—I am an impostor trying to live up to his
excellent example.
The role-playing industry is a pretty tight-knit one on the whole.
People regularly move across company boundaries to share their ideas.
We function much like a large, extended family spread across countries
and continents; we meet at reunions that pose as conventions, displaying
our latest creations like progeny. Each year there are marriages of game
designers to companies, sometimes divorces and the accompanying gos-
sip; newcomers spring up, distant cousins return to the scene. Rare is the
person who enters the industry without knowing someone here, either
by name, by example, or in person.
Nigel Derek Findley was one of those people; his name was includ-
ed in the credits of more books across more company lines than any
other freelancer. From AD&D to Vampire and almost everything in be-
tween, sourcebooks and scenarios, short stories and novels, Nigel Find-
ley achieved the kind of success writers in this industry rarely hope to
dream of.
That alone is enough to recommend him to the Gamer’s Hall of
Fame but there is so much more about him, so much about the person,
not the writer, that deserves recognition! I feel I must make some state-
ment about him for those who only knew him as a name on many credits
pages in their gaming libraries.
A single sentiment was expressed by nearly everyone who met him.
Despite Nigel’s success, he had the ability to put people at ease, to make
them feel that he was honoured to be in their presence rather than the
other way around. Despite his busy schedule, he was never too busy to
offer support and advice to aspiring writers, to read and offer a thought-
ful critique of someone else’s material, to pull out the stops and dash
out extra material on short notice to cover for someone else who’d left a

Obituary
company in the lurch. Nigel was a wonderfully generous man.

Nigel loved people and he loved knowledge. He approached eve-
ryone, no matter who they were, as if they had something of value to
offer. What an incredible message, a simple sentiment, yet so difficult to
practise. Nigel made it seem easy and natural. More than that, perhaps,
Nigel embodied the philosophy that you should do what your heart tells
you is right for you. Nigel wanted to be a writer and so he went out and
did it. He worked hard at it; he didn’t take it for granted or expect suc-
cess to fall into his lap. He applied himself and became a writer.
Unlike so many others who achieve success in their fields, Nigel rarely
offered unsolicited advice, but always offered moral support to any and
all who were thinking of striking out on their own, to follow their hearts.
He lived as an example, and his death at 35 serves as a reminder to the
rest of us that we don’t have forever to make our dreams into reality.
Looking back over what I have written, I am aware that I have still
failed to capture the things about Nigel that made him the person he
was. I cannot, simply by listing off the things he loved or hated, respect-
ed or resented, bring him to life for those who didn’t know him. Two
days before his death, as one of our regular Thursday night sessions was
winding down, Nigel offered me the only bit of unsolicited advice I ever
heard from him. I had been lamenting the fact that my job provided me
with lots of material, but I couldn’t remember the exact quotations that
made the material so rich. ‘Write everything down,’ he turned to me
and said. ‘When you’ve got his words, you’ve got the character.’ Unfortu-
nately for me, I cannot write down Nigel’s clarity, his cogency, his warm,
free laugh or the mischievous glint in his eyes as he planned and plotted.
It all seems like such trivia in his absence.
I suppose that is the thing about death. We’ve been robbed of his
vision, his spark of life; the industry has lost a professional, a writer and
a mentor; and those of us who knew him personally have lost a friend.
There is a Latin phrase that I wish I could find now. It translates into ‘He
lives through his work; look around you.’ For those of you who wish to
know more of Nigel, it is to his works you must look. He has left us with
many; ironically there are more coming. So prolific was he that publish-
ers will continue releasing his work well into 1996, a year after his death.
I, for one, can’t wait to see what’s waiting out there.
Nicole Lindroos Frein

Obituary
Nigel D. Findley:
Bibliography
Novels Double Exposure (scenario)

2XS (Penguin/Roc) Harlequin’s Back (contributor;
Into the Void (TSR) scenarios)
Lone Wolf (Penguin/Roc) Legends of EarthDawn (contributor;
Out of Nippon (West End) sourcebook)
Seed of Darkness (Mayfair) Lone Star Sourcebook
Shadowplay (Penguin/Roc) Native American Nations, Volumes 1
The Broken Sphere (TSR) & 2 (sourcebooks)
Neo-Anarchists’ Guide to North
Wizards of the Coast America (contributor; sourcebook)
Knights (sourcebook) Neo-Anarchists’ Guide to Real Life
Pawns (sourcebook) (sourcebook)
One Stage Before (scenario)
TSR Paradise Lost (scenario)
Castles (contributor; sourcebook) Paranormal Animals (sourcebook)
The Draconomicon (sourcebook) The Universal Brotherhood
Fate of Istus (contributor; (sourcebook)
scenarios) Tir Tairngire Sourcebook
Greyhawk Adventures (contributor;
sourcebook) Steve Jackson Games
Greyspace (sourcebook) GURPS Illuminati
Ninja Wars (scenario) GURPS Supporting Cast
Phases of the Moon (scenario)
Practical Planetology (sourcebook) Mayfair Games
Skulls & Crossbows (scenario) Horrors of North America
Thieves of Lankhmar (sourcebook) (sourcebook)
Tome of Magic (contributor) Psionics (sourcebook)
Van Richten’s Guide to Vampires To Hell & Back (sourcebook)
(sourcebook) Underground Notebook
Van Richten’s Guide to Werebeasts (sourcebook)
(sourcebook) Underground Player’s Handbook
(contributor; sourcebook)
FASA Voodoo (sourcebook)
Adept’s Way (contributor) Witches (sourcebook)
Corporations Shadowfiles
(sourcebook) West End Games
Denizens of EarthDawn, Vol. 2 Full Moon Draw (contributor;
(contributor) scenario)
Denver Boxed Set Heavy Weapons (sourcebook)

Obituary
Land Vehicles (sourcebook) White Wolf

Personal Weapons (sourcebook) Dark Alliance: Vancouver
Planet Guide: Goroth (worldbook) (sourcebook)
Planet of the Mists (scenario) Death and Damnation (contributor;
Shattered anthology (contributor; short story)
short story) Diablerie (sourcebook/scenario)
Drums Around the Fire (contributor;
short story)
Whit Publications
Streetfighter Player’s Guide
Badlands (sourcebook)
(contributor; prelude)
City Sourcebook (contributor;
Succubus Club (contributor;
sourcebook)
scenario)
Mutazoids 2nd Edition (contributor;
Truth Until Paradox (contributor;
rules system)
short story)
When Will You Rage? (contributor;
GDW short story)
Dark Races (contributor;
sourcebook) Pariah Press
Dark Messiahs (contributor) Dangerous Prey (contributor)

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interactive fantasy 1.

interactive fantasy 1.4 1

interactive fantasy 1.4 3

4 interactive fantasy 1.4

interactive fantasy 1.4 5

8 interactive fantasy 1.4

interactive fantasy 1.4 9

10 interactive fantasy 1.4

Acceptance With Alteration

interactive fantasy 1.4 11

cious for such a lowly ranking Adventurer, then it may be adjudicated

12 interactive fantasy 1.4

For further details contact:

John E. Tode is the Head of the Æs Society, a non-profit making organization

interactive fantasy 1.4 13

16 interactive fantasy 1.4

The RPG Background

interactive fantasy 1.4 17

Current Computer Mediation in Games

18 interactive fantasy 1.4

VR equipment is unpleasant to wear. The resolution of even the best

Human Mediation vs Computer Mediation

Interacting with the Virtual World

interactive fantasy 1.4 19

20 interactive fantasy 1.4

Cyberspace’s inherent immateriality and malleability of content provides

interactive fantasy 1.4 21

Quantum Gate, contained on a CD-ROM and displayed on a computer

22 interactive fantasy 1.4

The Computer as a Mask

interactive fantasy 1.4 23

potential to experience new kinds of behaviours and identities. For ex-

The Case of ‘Julie’

24 interactive fantasy 1.4

Meeting the Vice-President

RichC34: hello all

interactive fantasy 1.4 25

DzDevil: @}——}——}———}————— for you Tink :-)

Cyberspace conversation in this sort of room is characterized by non-

26 interactive fantasy 1.4

play a text-based virtual simulation of a character they create in a Star

Whether users are playing fictitious characters or some aspect of them-

Interactive Movies and Beyond

interactive fantasy 1.4 27

see, hear, talk to or touch a real-looking virtual person in virtual rooms

Whole sections drop out depending on choices viewers make … If

28 interactive fantasy 1.4

Through these different devices, the user is surrounded by a three-

interactive fantasy 1.4 29

Pioneers on the Electronic Frontier

mortal mind perpetuates its own thought … A mill at work or the

If mankind’s evolving thought brought about the water-wheels and mills

30 interactive fantasy 1.4

Carroll, Jon; ‘Guerrillas in the Myst’, Wired August, 1994.

interactive fantasy 1.4 31

Back in Inter*action #1, I wrote what I thought was a comprehensive

On GarouMUSH you would be more likely to type:

32 interactive fantasy 1.4

What Makes the Difference

1: The simplest and most important new idea in GarouMUSH is that it

page Anpwhotep=Will you be on tomorrow night?

which sends a private message to Anpwhotep:

Blinks-at-Fire pages: Will you be on tomorrow night?