12/24/22: Two Hands
I have two competing instincts when it comes to roleplaying games:
On one hand, I love systems and mechanics. I like seeing how different games use, or don’t use, dice and how they structure play. I enjoy working out what different systems bring to a game. This is the D&D hand.
On the other hand, a lot of my table tendencies are all about minimal systems and trust. Let’s just play some characters! If we need to randomize things for some reason, let’s keep it simple. Or, even better, let’s just talk it out to decided what happens. This is the Amber hand.
D&D and Amber were my first games. With D&D that’s factual, with Amber it’s more metaphorical.
My grandparents bought me a D&D box set for my tenth birthday but I couldn’t find anyone to play with in my hometown. It wasn’t until college that I roleplayed with other people for the first time. (Up til then, I just roleplayed with myself, you know, internally.)
As previously stated, that first game was D&D and obviously it was enough of what I wanted to pull me deeper into gaming. I’m not sure whether there were other roleplaying games after D&D but before Amber. I do know that I bought Amber Diceless Roleplay when the book came out in 1992 and played it soon after. It had everything I wanted in a game but it took me some time to find the important kernel.
Juxtaposed with D&D, Amber has essentially one mechanic: the game-master decides. To be clear, there are definitely mechanical things that players are supposed to pay attention to (points, ranks, experience) but, because the game doesn’t use dice, all of that could be window-dressing or a comfortable illusion.
Amber laid bare the real roots of rpgs for me: trust and cooperation.
With its design, Amber said, “Listen, the person running the game has all the power. If they want something to happen, it happens. Whatever they say goes.” But what it also said to me was, “The players don’t have to show up. Without players, there isn’t a game.”
Essentially: the players have to trust the game-master not to be capricious and arbitrary. The GM has to trust the players to pick up what they are putting on the table.
As I get older, I lean more and more toward that Amber hand. I just want to get together and play some characters, have some interesting conversations, and see what happens.