Mad Brew Labs

Sunglar (of Stargazer’s World^[1]) kicked off a blog carnival on the Role Play Media Network^[2] earlier this week that focuses on how Social Media has impacted the hobby and the pundits surrounding it. Being keen on technology and its application on the hobby^[3], I felt this was an excellent topic to discuss here at the Labs.

First, let’s define what social media is. Social media are interactive networks and/or tools that store and transmit information. Forums, blogs, wikis, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Kickstarter, deviantArt, BitTorrent, Second Life, Digg, Reddit, YouTube, Picasa and multitudes of other applications and technologies are social media. Anytime users can rate, discuss, share, or otherwise interact with the data or each other, social media is involved.

Social Media Landscape by Fred Cavazza

I think social media has impacted five major properties of the hobby. Social media has increased accessibility to the hobby, decreased the time of distribution, expanded the reach of the hobby, made the permanence of the hobby mutable, and finally, social media has bridged gaps in intimacy between hobbyists as well as publishers & designers.

Accessibility

Before the internet and cheap (often free) social media tools, the means to produce and deliver content were cost prohibitive. It would mean spending money at a print shop and obtaining a mailing list of people to actually send it to and/or distributing it at local shops.

Anything beyond simple black & white facsimiles would require specialized skills and tools of the print industry. Today, one can leverage cheap or free drag & drop applications to create surprisingly good layouts for websites, e-books, and print-on-demand solutions. In essence, this means anyone can be a magazine/e-zine editor, webmaster, or author.

Time/Speed

Social media has significantly reduced the time required to distribute of content. In the print world, it takes days (newspapers) or even months (book printing & shipping) for content to be delivered for consumption. These days, as soon as the content is ready, it can be immediately published and ready for hobbyists to read and use.

With tools like feed readers, email, Twitter, and Facebook, the hobbyist can achieve near instantaneous awareness of when new content is available. No longer does one have to make a trip to the local shop or wait for a product to appear on a shelf.

Reach

Before the internet and social media, the reach of the hobbyist was pretty much limited to people known locally. Programs such as play-by-mail could transcend this limitation, but it suffered from extended periods of waiting by the mailbox and drew out play to a sometimes mind-numbingly slow one action per week.

With the internet and social media tools, the reach of the hobbyist is global. Even language barriers become easily scalable obstacles with a browser like Chrome (recognizes and prompts user if they would like to translate pages). The lone gamer stuck in the backwaters is only a click away from his hobby and others who share his passion.

Permanence

Social media and the internet have allowed what were once immutable and absolute to become evolving and sometimes even capricious. Before these tools, a game reached the hobby in what would be its final form. In order to fix/change the design, a new printing, supplement, or an entirely new edition would have to be created.

Today, errata and fan-made house rules and supplements make a game a constantly evolving beast (should you choose to let it). It seems like WotC puts out a new errata document while prominent bloggers offer optional rules and mechanics to spice up the game on a daily basis.

Depending on your perspective, the new mutability of the hobby can either be a blessing, a curse, or both.

Intimacy

I think the final property of the hobby that social media has changed is that it has allowed hobbyists and designers to develop (at least an illusion of) personal relationships. No longer are the names printed inside our game manuals some unknown being in the ivory tower.

Social media has allowed the hobbyist to glimpse into those areas that were once inaccessible. We can see behind the curtain and watch the processes that make a publisher run. We can give feedback and get answers direct from the designer (without having to wait to see if our question was answered in next month’s sage column).

Convenience

All of these factors add up to one property, convenience. Social media and the internet make it easier to organize, play, obtain content, and communicate among ourselves and with the industry. The ability to connect is nearly effortless.

Be sure to return to the originating post for this RPMN blog carnival, Social Media and its impact on RPGs to see what everyone else is saying.

Listening to: Murderdolls – Women & Children Last – Chapel of Blood

REFERENCES

[1] Sunglar at Stargazer’s World.

[2] The RPMN is a Ning social network for RPG hobbyists created by Berin Kinsman.

[3] Check out my many posts that deal with leveraging technology for RPGs.

Social Networked RPGs

What would the architecture of a social media enhanced roleplaying game look like? This article attempts to answer that question as well as provide some ideas on how to implement comparable controls across many dissimilar social networks. This is a continuation of the discussion initiated by Jonathan Jacobs with a post at The Core Mechanic^[1] and my response^[2] from yesterday. If you haven’t read the first two articles, I encourage you to read them before continuing.

• RPGs, SMGs, and the Shared Fence
• Bridging the Gap: RPGs and Social Media

In Bridging the Gap, I explored the possibilities of how to embed a roleplaying game into social networks while still maintaining the elements which define roleplaying games. Today, I wanted to look at the technical hurdles of actually implementing such a game.

Core Technology

There would need to be a central hub where users would create accounts (and register the social networking accounts of their choice). This would ideally be a website (with a mobile version) that would offer the most powerful and comprehensive tools available for the game: character generators, virtual table top, chat, audio/video conferencing, campaign wiki, searchable databases of resources (rules, monsters, character options), etc. It would be the DDI^[3] that should have been.

Network Penetration

One of the goals of a social media roleplaying game (SMRPG) would be to hook into as many social networks as possible. This has two large advantages: presence and accessibility.

Wide network penetration would establish a highly visible presence that can help draw users in. Game data presented across networks would obviously be branded (think about an “updated from SMRPG 5 minutes ago” tag), so anyone playing the game would be advertising it for free. Even though the platform would have at least some monetization, the goal is not about money, it is about building a user base (the money comes a natural by-product).

The accessibility means that players can retrieve information in the fashion which most suits their current online behavior. It means they don’t need to create yet another account or buy into the latest cell phone fad or purchase expensive data packages. Chances are they will already have something that works with the platform.

There are also a number of social media networks that would not necessarily enable player participation but rather could be used as tools to enhance the game itself. Examples include embedding custom movies you have uploaded to YouTube for introduction or cut scenes (like a custom Star Wars Crawl^[4]), taking advantage of Pandora^[5] or Last.FM^[6] for mood music, or using Flickr^[7] to host maps. These social media networks can be instrumental in offloading both functionality as well as storage space, making the platform cheaper to host.

Functionality Limitations

Of course, the more networks the platform hooks into, the problems with maintaining equivalent functionality across those networks. The Application Programming Interfaces (API) will not support the same functions and some networks will be more powerful than others.

It would definitely be a challenge to be able to replicate all the controls that are available on the Facebook^[8] SMRPG widget in Twitter^[9]. For one, there are a few dozen clients that people use to interact with Twitter and asking them to use a new client might not be easy.

Yet, Twitter might be able to be used as a primitive command line interface for an SMRPG. I can imagine utilizing keyword hash tags to accomplish actions that are recognized by the game engine. Of course, Twitter could also just be used as a text dump that the game uses to publish concise descriptions of current game activity. Obviously, the platform would need to understand each network’s strength (comprehensive communication is not one of Twitter’s strong suits).

Platform Components

The diagram to the right illustrates very simplified, top level view of a possible SMRPG platform. Each block is really a distinct architecture that would likely be comprised of several smaller modules. The foundation of the platform would be a massive database which would store all the characters, current progress, adventures, activity logs, images, rules, and whatever else necessary to run and record games.

The next layer up from the database is the business logic, which in this case is the game engine which validates of all the data coming in and out of the database against the rules and saved user preferences. The logic makes sure Suzie’s action resolves before Larry’s because she has the better initiative (or waits for GM approval before continuing).

The layer above the game engine is dual interpreters; one that handles incoming traffic and one that handles outgoing traffic. These interpreters ensure that the data received from the client interface is formatted in into something the database will understand and vice versa.

Everything up to and including the interpreters would most likely be built within the database itself using a combination of stored procedures, triggers, and data transformations all reacting to inbound and outbound data. The next layers would most likely be services or daemons that wait to relay information to the appropriate destination(s).

The client interface communicates with the social networks asynchronously, sending and receiving information as needed. The interface would likely be comprised of processes that interface with network APIs. Finally, the very top layer is the social media networks themselves which may or may not need additional front end user interfaces (most like things like Facebook widgets).

Conclusion

My possible SMRPG platform is essentially a product of quick and minimal brainstorming and I thought of additional detail and design improvements as I was writing the article. A project of this scope really would entail a lot of work and starting capital to really apply the support needed to launch such a platform. Thus, I wouldn’t expect to see anything like this realized from with the traditional roleplaying game industry.

The Core Mechanic continues the discussion of social media and roleplaying games in Social Media Role Playing Minigames.

References

[1] Roleplaying Games, Social Media Games, and the Shared Fence. The Core Mechanic. 2010-01-12.

[2] Bridging the Gap: RPGs and Social Media. Mad Brew Labs. 2010-01-14

[3] Dungeons & Dragons Insider, an online suite of tools available for subscription.

[4] Ten Minute Star Wars Crawl. Mad Brew Labs. 2008-09-21.

[5] Pandora, automated music recommendation and Internet radio service.

[6] Last.FM, an internet radio and music video site.

[7] Flickr, an image and video hosting site.

[8] Facebook, a social networking site.

[9] Twitter, a micro-blogging service.

Listening to: Tyler Bates – 300 OST – The Hot Gates

Social Networked RPGs

The Core Mechanic proposed^[1] that an opportunity exists for RPGs to utilize the technology that popular social media games (SMGs), such as Farmville or Mafia Wars^[2], employ today and by extension make RPGs more accessible. The objective is the ability to roleplay around the clock without needing to wait for game night.

While I think Jonathan and I have some different ideas about what constitutes a roleplaying game^[3], and how well one can be managed through social media, I do agree that there is a ton of opportunity that begs to be exploited. Also, I’m tired of seeing what your gangster vampire grew on the farm to feed his endangered species pet whenever I check my news feed on Facebook.

My only concern is providing the accessibility, the interactivity, and social media penetration without the roleplaying game reduced to a mere SMG or massively multiplayer online game (MMOG). The human element needs to be preserved; it is probably the most important aspect of roleplaying games.

Assuming the integrity of what is a roleplaying game is maintained, there are still many issues to overcome. For the remainder of this article, it is given that the following exists:

• The platform is built around a single game system
• Human Game Masters supervise games
• Many rules are automated, but may be selectively overridden by a GM
• Game Masters may list their games publicly
• Player characters have some sort of advancement
• Players may interface with the game through many clients (browser, Facebook, iPhone, etc.)

The Accessibility Hurdle

Probably the biggest issue facing an infrastructure that allows the level of accessibility that social media games provide is maintaining a consistent experience for players (including Game Masters). Jonathan had mentioned in the comments that “The game is always moving forward, and there’s never any point in which a player can’t “poke” the game and participate.” ^[1]

This is where the entire platform breaks down when I try to visualize it in my head. The idea, as I understand it, is that a player should be able to engage with the game at will and without any expectations of commitment. What about when a game is half-way through an important combat or a serious interaction with a prominent non-player character (NPC)?

Accessibility raises a few questions about what behaviors are acceptable or encouraged:

• Do you want players to enter or leave important scenes at will?
• Can players use the same character across many games and enjoy all the benefits?
• Are players free to perform actions without waiting for approval or consequences?
• Are players allowed access to any and all options?
• Is everyone at once both a player and a Game Master?

Of course, it all depends on how far accessibility is taken. If the goal is truly to provide players the ability to game at their convenience, without taking others’ stakes in the game into consideration, I think the game then crosses the line into SMG territory.

However, if the goal is to merely provide multiple lines of communication and methods of accessing the game, then I am on board. Then the next question is, “Would placing a ShareThis^[4] feature on MapTools^[5] accomplish most of our goals?”

Mini Games Option

One approach to lightly embed a roleplaying game into social media is to implement mini games that do not require moderation by Game Masters, but could be amended by them and add value to the actual game. These mini games might include tasks normally glossed over in most games such as researching inside a great library which could yield access to rituals in game. The majority of crafts could be given this treatment as well stronghold building.

Virtual LARP Option

Another method that possibly maximizes player accessibility while minimizing interruptions during critical play is treating the platform like a Live Action RolePlaying (LARP) game in the spirit of White Wolf’s Mind’s Eye Theatre (MET)^[6] series of games run by the Camarilla^[7].

Using the LARP option would most likely utilize two modes of play, structured and unstructured. The structured mode is the traditional roleplaying with a Game Master moderating the session. The unstructured mode would essentially be one or more players engaging in self-moderated roleplay. An option might even be available that allows players engaging in unstructured play to request a GM to moderate when necessary.

Only by participating in the structured mode can players receive new objects (treasure) and progress through official storylines. However, players may always trade objects they already acquired when participating in either structured or unstructured modes.

Like the Camarilla, the platform would be a shared world where you can travel from game to game (mostly) freely. Limiting GMs to only official modules (or stories, adventures, etc.) would allow a modicum of control over balance and power creep (which will no doubt be a constant struggle to maintain). Placing restrictions on when players can enter structured mode play and wait periods to join after bailing from structured mode play could also help maintain consistent experience.

The LARP option actually begins to sound like a very advanced MUSH^[8] and there are probably a few things that such a platform could heavily borrow from such established technologies.

Conclusion

I’m not sure my vision of possible implementations concurs with Jonathan’s vision, but I think we can surely agree that there are opportunities for roleplaying games to take advantage of social technologies. Tomorrow I plan on taking a look at how one might develop an infrastructure that actually interfaced with popular social networks.

Articles that continue the discussion:

• Social Media RPG Platform — Mad Brew Labs
• Social Media Role Playing Minigames — The Core Mechanic

I should also note that using footnotes is a great idea and I actually tried to make a habit of using them a year ago with my Roleplaying Philosophy series^[3] but failed to maintain the discipline to use them.

References

[1] Roleplaying Games, Social Media Games, and the Shared Fence. The Core Mechanic. 2010-01-12.

[2] Social media games for Facebook created by Zynga Games.

[3] “A roleplaying game is a dynamic form of play, structured by rules with human moderation, where players assume and develop virtual roles of sentience and overcome opposition by freely improvising character actions in order to achieve a possibly infinite number of goals.”
RPP-101: Defining Roleplaying Games. Mad Brew Labs. 2009-01-15.

“The only requirement is that you play a game where you assume the role of a PC/avatar. The medium doesn’t matter – it’s the role that matters.” ^[2]

[4] ShareThis is a plug-in that allows you to post content across several social networks.

[5] A virtual table top (VTT) created by RPTools.

[6] Mind’s Eye Theatre is the LARP imprint of rules for White Wolf’s Word of Darkness setting.

[7] The Camarilla is the official World of Darkness fan club that also doubles as White Wolf’s organized play arm.

[8] A Multi-User Shared Hallucination, or MUSH, belongs to a family of text-based social games also called MUDs and MOOs that date back to 1975.

Listening to: Opeth – Ghost Reveries – Atonement