Improvisational Game Theater - Thoughts

I originally wrote about Improvisational Game Theater on my blog in 2006. I subsequently wrote a number of posts, either as comments or supplemental explanations of why I think IGT is likely to become "a thing" in relation to Professional Gamemastering.

There have been a lot of GMs that have come to the Professional Gamemaster Society wanting to make a living doing Pro-GMing.  Their idea, as has been mine, is that it would be absolutely fantastic if we could turn our favorite hobby into a career somehow.  Like artists and musicians, and other performing artists, we'd like to do what we love for a living.

Now a number of people have pointed out that the economics of Professional Gamemastering do not seem to work all that well, especially at the small scale of local tabletop RPG games with a handful of people, and it's hampered a lot of potential Pro-GMs because we don't see a road from here ($) to there ($$$).  For most, not only is it hard to imagine how to make any money at all Gamemastering, but the the notion of making substantial money seems a pipe dream and beyond the realm of possibility.

I do not think so.

Again, and for the umpteenth time, the answer is in Professionally run Improvisational Game Theater.  In 2006 I sketched out a modality by which I would do it for my own world of Elthos.  Since then, I've not had the ability to sling it together because I have other work under the umbrella of the Elthos Project to tend to first.  And of course, it goes without saying, again, as usual, I am the worlds greatest slow poke, so please don't rush me.  Nothing good comes from rushing.  Of course, in the meantime, there have been a number of enterprising people who have raced ahead of me and produced variations on the IGT concept, and some quite successfully.  Critical Roll comes to mind as an excellent example.  Kudos and congratulations to all of those fine people!  They're doing a great job, and I'm thoroughly impressed, even while being jealous and annoyed that I'm such a super-slow-poke at all of this. But I digress.

At any rate, I want to talk about this again because I read a post by RPGPundit who is railing in his own way against one aspect of Improvisational Game Theater. His gripe is that what people are watching it for is entertainment, like watching a Soap Opera, or Serial TV Show, or something like that, and is largely divorced from the actual game of D&D. A large percent of the people who are watching IGT on twitch are not watching it because they play RPGs, or even intend do to so... they are watching it because they are interested in the Characters being played and their stories. And yes, very much like like people who watch Soap Operas.  And it annoys him.  Ok, my guess is that he's annoyed for certain reasons, though he doesn't quite elaborate on what those reason are exactly, and I'm not going to speculate about that. And this post is not a rebuttal to his point.  I agree with him completely.  I simply don't share in his angst about it.

The reason why is because, as I've made the case to the Professional Gamemaster Society before, this kind of viewership is exactly what is required for Professional Gamemasters to make real money Gamemastering.

No, it is not the same thing exactly as standard table top role playing.  I know, it isn't.  And the reason why is because with a generalized audience which includes a large number of non-role payers, the story and character development that would go on in a good IGT game is what that audience would be most interested in.  Random Character deaths would, in all likelihood, irk them, especially if the randomness was too extreme, and/or their favorite Characters get killed by a random (read stupid) die roll.  Nor would they be likely to be very into the rules, or watching the usual D&Dish rules banter, or much of the OCC activity that usually attends most tabletop role playing game sessions.  What they would be looking for, instead, is a compelling story where the results of the actions of the characters is both interesting and meaningful within the context of the World being played.

Improvisational Game Theater, in my opinion, will evolve into one of the major forms of entertainment of the 21st century.  It's taking time getting there, and even the best of the current efforts have self-limiting flaws in their implementations, but as everyone can see... progress in the direction of successful IGT is being made.

Personally, as soon as my other project work is complete, I hope to join these efforts with my own attempts at this thing.  I believe that those who can really pull this off will be at the center of the entertainment world in due time.  And really, I think it is just a matter of time.  People are already doing some great things.  And audiences are already being primed for this through the activities of shows like Critical Role.  Everything is slowly moving in the direction of a fusion of entertainment and gaming.  And no matter how much RPGPundit gripes that it's not real D&D ... it will nevertheless become an enormously rich, diverse and fabulous form of entertainment, and sustain many awesome career arcs for Professional GMs of the future.

Hawkes-Robinson's RPG Research Project

I thought I'd just post a quick link to W. A. Hawkes-Robinson's (this is an impressive individual) RPG Research Project.  He's doing some really great work and it's worth taking the time to check out.

Here's a blurb from his site:

"RPG (Role-Playing Game) Research is an ongoing long-term series of projects that include studies on the therapeutic and educational aspects of role-playing games, with additional emphasis on determining any causality related to participation in role-playing gaming. This research includes tracking any other projects around the world that use role-playing games as educational or therapeutic intervention modalities...

Utilizing a multidisciplinary approach, including disciplines from recreation therapy, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, education, and many other perspectives. RPG Research is a project of RPG Therapeutics LLC founded, and is the umbrella name under which the projects, website, communities, and other resources are identified. To date, this is a non-profit project founded (and funded) by William Hawkes-Robinson, with the helpful support of many others. This website is dedicated to supporting role-playing game research in general, and any other individuals or organizations interested in sharing research information about the therapeutic or educational aspects of role playing gaming."

Dang.  I'm impressed.

Some Thoughts on the Indie RPG Industry

Over the past few days a few of us have been discussing the pros and cons, and ups and downs, bright sides and dark sides of the Indie RPG Book Publishing industry. You can find the full conversation here: Original Thread on G+. What follows is my summary and the conclusions that I've drawn thus far. I'd be curious to hear what you think.

...

At the end of the day what really matters? That's the question. I think a lot of people who read this thread might come away with the feeling that I'm pretty gloom and doom about the Indie RPG Book Publishing industry. And that's a fair take on it, frankly. As an industry I think it's really problematic. In summery there are two reasons for that.

1) There is already a massive glut in the market of RPG Books, and most of those are minor innovations on previously existing systems.

2) The glut has produced a downward spiral in terms of pricing, and this has a deleterious effect on everyone in the industry, not just the people who are pricing at zero or Pay-What-You-Want. The fact that this option has become so prevalent that DriveThruRPG has created a special button for it suggests that the state of the industry is such that negligible price points have become the prevailing expectation for Indie Games. And what this does is make the entire effort (and it is massive) to produce an Indie RPG completely worthless monetarily speaking. And in fact, most Indie Publishers who have been through the ringer will tell you - don't expect to quit your day job doing this. There's 1500 RPG titles out on DriveThruRPG now, and that number is growing by about 10 a month. You are far more likely to lose money at this than make money.

So where is the bright spot in all of this? Actually, I see several.

1) The drive towards negligible price points will weed out those who are in this for the wrong reasons. If you are in this for money, you will be disappointed and probably not do it again.

2) Those who are in this for the love of the art will still proceed to produce wonderful RPGs because it is easier now than ever before, and that's cool.

3) Since it's hard to imagine completely original rules systems for RPGs given the plethora of systems out there we can probably be satisfied to know that most likely if we have a vision of a way to run an RPG that works best for us, there are probably rules out there that do it that way (or close enough for us to reasonably easily house rule), and so we don't have to invent new wheels. There's lots and lots of wheels rolling around.

The upshot for Indie RPG Rules Book Publishers is this ... you will probably lose money at it, but if you don't care about that, and are doing this for the love of the art, then you will likely be satisfied in the end. You will learn a lot, hone your own game down to a fine system through play testing up the wazzu, you create enthusiasm for your efforts among your friends and acquaintances, you wind up with a really spiffy rules book that looks fabulous and you're genuinely proud of, and you'll have shared it out the world and maybe there will be 200 people out there who downloaded it, and 20 of those who actually paid for it, and of that maybe you'll get 5 or 10 people who play your rules system, enjoy it, and write to you about it saying Thanks, and offering their viewpoint on it. Which is actually pretty awesome.

Maybe all of that will cost you a lot of time and some money (to get the artwork and layout and stuff). But hobbies always cost people money. That's normal and who cares?

The only people likely to come away disappointed are those who are in this to try and make a career out of publishing their Indie Rules Books. That is unlikely to happen at this point, and for those people the effort, time and cost will not be compensated for by a few people saying "that's cool, thanks."

But for the RPG Artistes who simply enjoy the process of honing and working on creating a quality game for themselves and a few friends and handful of strangers, and don't mind spending some money on it, it's a wonderful time indeed to be alive. Never before have we had such a fantastic opportunity to create high quality work at such a low cost. We should revel in it.

But for Pete's sake... don't expect to quit your day job.

At least for now. My final note on this (probably not final, come to think of it) is this ... I believe the future of RPGs as a form of entertainment in the 21st Century is bright. There will come GM assistance tools, and all kinds of amazing technologies that will make GMing easier... and potentially profitable. And though creating new Rules Systems may not be a promising area of endeavor as there is already a glut of those, the area of promise is in creating settings and honing one's skills as a GM to play those settings with fantastic creativity and style. And if I don't miss my guess in the coming years we will find out that _that_ is where the money is.

So keep the faith, and don't be discouraged if your Rules Books don't top the charts and you can't quit your day job on it... keep honing your creative skills. You'll have a great time doing so, your players will appreciate it, and who knows? Maybe there will be in fact a market for you to enter once the industry catches up with technologies that make it possible for you to do GameMastering Professionally. Just a hunch. ;)

Professional GameMaster Society - Progress

Wanting to focus on achievable goals, our fledgling Professional GameMaster Society agreed that we should concentrate as a first order of business on the plucking the low lying fruit.  That has been to create a package of materials for Pro-GMs to use in the pursuit of one of our easiest to generate business models, which we're calling "The Glorified Game-Sitting Service". 

In this model the GM sets up shop with a local Community Center, Library, School, or group of parent's to host a game for young people, probably between the ages of 11 and 14.  The fee structure is based, loosely, on a sliding scale depending on the number of participants, with the minimum being 4 (salt to taste) and the maximum being 12 (ditto).  The pay ranges from $12 / hour / Player for 4 to $8 / hour / Player for 12.  Of course the more Players the more money, even with the sliding scale.

For the Package I created a set of documents that can be used by the Society Members by downloading them and replacing the <Item> bracketed items in the document with whatever is appropriate.  For example "Welcome to the <Name> Game Club" where name might get replaced with "Elthos".   The documents include:

1. A Cover Letter intended as an introduction to the Community Center Administrators, or Library Staff, or whomever would be appropriate, and simply introduces the concept and asks if there is interest.
   
2. A Proposal Letter which goes into some more detail and provides additional information, and works towards setting up a program.
   
3. A Game Club Rules document for the Parents which explains the basics that they need to know about the Club, and provides additional information about pricing, location, and the benefits of the Club for their kids.
   
4. A Pricing Calculator Spreadsheet for GMs to use to work out how much they wish to charge.

All of the documents have the Professional GameMaster Society Logo, and include a link to our Website, as well as a link to our individual Google+ Professional Gamemaster Society Profiles.

At this point the documents are pretty much completed, but I'm waiting to hear from our members on any suggestions they may have for changes before finalizing them.  Other than that I may add a poster or two as examples for help with marketing the local games, possibly.  Overall, I'm quite pleased with the results.  I see this service as particularly useful for High School and College age students who wish to earn extra money GameMastering for young people.  While I don't expect this to become a means by which anyone reasonably expect to get rich, it can serve as a nice way to make supplemental income.

That said, the Society has come up with a number of wonderful brainstorming proposals on a variety of methods for achieving our longer term goals (which do include getting rich GameMastering) that I've also documented in our Google Share Folder.  That as well has been coming along nicely and we have some very interesting ideas on the table.  Some members are prototyping various concepts at this point.  I'm pleased to see it.

This has been a very thought provoking and interesting experiment thus far, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it leads in the future.   My next step will be to pick out, with the Society's help and advice, our most promising model and see what I can do with it, while encouraging our other members to do likewise.  Hopefully, if all goes well, we will have further progress and something of interest to the wider community of GameMasters to report.

If you happen to be interested you may request to join the Professional GameMaster Society via the Google+ site.

Rationales for Professional Gamesmastering

Recently a group of us GMs over on Google+ began talking about the idea of Professional Gamesmastering. To facilitate the conversational brainstorming and debate of this idea I started the Professional Gamesmaster Society... It has been eye-opening. We've had some mixed reactions, ranging from "No way - that's impossible" to "Where the heck do I sign up?!"

Some people were curious why we would consider such a thing, given that the hobby has been around for over three decades and there's been no great effort to professionalize it. So I thought I'd chat a bit about what we think are valid reasons for doing so. Here's our thinking:

Gamemastering is Hard Work and GM's Deserve Something For It

Many Gamesmasters invest a huge amount of time and effort into their games, especially if they run their own homebrew system and craft their own adventures. In fact it is enough effort that it turns out few people are willing or able to actually do it. I think the ratio of Players to GMs has been pretty steady at roughly ten to one for thirty years. The fact is, GMing is time consuming and difficult, requiring numerous skills that are not easily acquired, both technical and social... and therefore GMs are something of a scarce commodity. Gamesmastering is both an art and a science, and those who are good at it are frankly providing some of the best entertainment in the world. The only people I know who can put me into another world the way Tolkien did with 'Lord of the Rings', are good Gamesmasters. We think that's got to be worth something. We pay for music, artwork, literature, movies and practically every other form of entertainment. Why not Gamesmastering? Given the amount of work, and the greatness of their creations, we think good GMs deserve remuneration for their efforts.

When Money Is Involved The Quality of the Event Goes Up

When activities involve money everyone gets a little more serious. And the quality of the related events go up. Lets face it - today a lot of games are run kinda sloppy. People show up late, they don't have their character sheets, they don't remember the rules, key facts that were revealed in the previous game sessions, the GM was busy helping a friend study for a test, etc, etc. This is especially the case in online Virtual Table Top games where the most common complaint I hear is that online Players fail to show up. It's pretty consistent and most VTT GMs factor in that half their Players may fail to show up at any given game - often without notice. But this also happens at regular Table Top Games, too (although not to the same degree, of course), and generally people tend to not take any of it all that seriously. After all its just a game, right? And for something informal like a game between friends, we kind of just accept that it's a loose ship and stuff happens and people don't show, or it's not that well prepared, and so on, and it's all just kind of "ok" like that. What else could we expect, after all? It's just a game and "it doesn't cost anyone anything" We accept the low quality because we can't really argue that people should take it any more seriously as no one is paying anything and it's all "just for fun". Which of course it's all just for fun. So is going to the movies. But we still expect high quality. But not so much with our RPGing experiences. We accept that things just kind of sluff, and that's fine. There's nothing really wrong with it, actually, if that's all you expect out of the experience. There's no skin off anyone's back if everyone just kind of slouches through the thing. And even with all that sloppiness the games are still quite fun, which is of course why after more than three decades the hobby has grown to its present size and has garnered so much enthusiastic support from its fans. In fact, I think most RPGers agree - there is nothing else like it out there. It's an awesome hobby.

Yet still, the games, we think, are not really as great as they could be. And we suspect that if we bring money into the equation then suddenly the quality in fact will change for the better. Now people get serious. You mean I'm paying for this? Oh now I care. Now my fellow Players better get here on time. Now the GM better be prepared. Now I give a damn about what is going on and I don't want to waste time on my cell phone. And so on. We believe that everything improves as soon as money gets involved because then, and only then (pretty much), does everyone actually have skin in the game. And it makes a big difference. Money = Higher Quality Gaming. A theory. But we think it will turn out to be true.

Improvement of the Art

If Gamesmasters were to be paid, and sufficiently (ie - able to make a career out of it) so that they could actually focus on the art, their mastery of the tools and their skills as GM would go up. And up. And up. They'd have a vested interest in making sure that their Players are thrilled by each game. They'd be willing to put in the time it takes to truly prep for their games in a way that makes them absolutely amazing. They'd study for it, do research for it, bring the art into it, and live it and breath it. And what we would see blossoming from this is a class of Gamesmaster-Artists who produce truly phenomenal, professional quality Worlds. We would see the flourishing of RPGs as the new 21st century art form. And it would be awesome! I'm convinced of that.

Can it work? Let's Do the Pro-GM Math

But how can Gamesmasters make the kind of money necessary to make this happen? Enough to actually devote themselves to Gamesmastering as a career? Instead of speculating, lets do the math.

I need $1000 / week to pay my rent and live comfortably, and save some money for retirement. Ok. How many games at what price would I need to charge my Players to work that out?

If I charge $5 / hour per Player and I had 5 Players per game, I would need to GM 40 hours per week to make $1000 / week. Do those numbers seem completely crazy to you? They don't to me. It seems doable. You can even tweak the yellow values to get different balances according to your needs and preferences. But your goal would be to achieve the $ needed / week in any case. I'll tweak mine a bit again because I figure I want to have enough between game prep time. So I want to play only 20 hours per week. What does that look like? I merely need to either increase my hourly fee to $10 / hour, or I need to have 10 Players per game. Conversely, I could nuance it further and charge a little more and have a few more Players per game... (note values given are arbitrary - you can fill in a $ needed / week based on your own cost of living)...



So what I'm showing here is that Gamesmasters could possibly make a decent living if they could muster up 7 Players per game and play 20 hours per week, if they charge $7.14 / hour per Player. For me this would mean I'd run 4 games of 5 hours each per week. I could do two on the weekend, and two in the evenings during the week. Does that sound doable to you? It does to me. Does it sound easy? No, not really. Presently with the current tools available GMing is a time intensive activity, and it's not all just airy fairy sitting around thinking about what kinds of castles and monsters are around. It's tough grinding grunt work planning for a Campaign. There's a lot of stats and a lot of number crunching and record keeping involved. And there aren't very good tools around to help with it. Yet.

Tools of the Trade

I'd want to have a bunch of professional quality tools to make my life as Gamesmaster as easy as possible, of course, so that I could streamline the prepping of my games down to a bare minimum of time so I could focus on the fun stuff - the castles and monsters and all that airy fairy stuff I really enjoy. If we had such tools would this now sound more doable? It does to me.

Tools of this kind are on the way, and some already exist, at least in their infancy-form. If you consider the possibilities of Virtual Table Top Systems such as Roll20... the feasibility presents itself as within striking range. Not 100% there at the moment, but coming along, and showing promise. And with a better improved set of tools it could be that supporting the number of Play Hours needed to make a living on GMing might be all the more feasible. There would be more to it than just that, of course, and I'm not factoring in additional costs such as taxes and advertizing. I'm merely showing that the math indicates that there's a possibility to make a living Gamesmastering, if you can make the arrangements for it with enough Players and can schedule enough hours at the right price.

Conclusion

Just some thoughts for you folks. There will be more thoughts coming along soon on this topic as things move forward. We're working on a Website for Professional Gamemasters now, and hopefully we will have something to show for the effort soon.

So let me ask - If you could manage to make a career out of Gamemastering somehow, would you want to do it?

By the way, if you are interested in contributing to the thought processing, planning, and implementation of this concept, and you feel you have something to offer in the way of experience, knowledge, or enthusiastic support ... do drop by our Professional Gamemaster Society Community and give a holler. We're looking for bright and engaged members to help put this all together and actually make something happen. I will periodically be posting here regarding our progress.

The GM as Magician

Just a brief rumination that occurred to me while driving home today. There's a lot of tips about how to GM better games. And that's all well and good. But keep in mind something as you GM - you are like a magician to your Players. Well, I should caveat that by saying that it varies to a certain degree depending on the type of game your running. The more Narrative your style of game, the more Magician you become.

How so? Well you set up encounters. You create Maps. You create NPCs. You act them out improvisationally during the course of the game. No one knows really exactly what is going to happen because the Dice and the Players conspire to change whatever plans we may have had. And so improvisation is required.

But what the Players don't know, and in my opinion shouldn't know, is exactly what's been planned, and what's being improvised. They know its a mix. But they don't know how much of a mix. And that's a good thing, and should stay that way. Because one of the things that brings interest and excitement to the game is the idea that the GM's World is this real "other Place" that you can use your imagination to venture into. And when that works and you achieve some level of Immersion - it's awesome. Provided of course that the GM's World is actually awesome. But that's a different point. What I'm suggesting is that the GM should not divulge to the Players what his 'tricks' are... any more than the Magician will show you how he does a coin trick. The moment he does - the mystery is finished. You may have learned a trick, but you've lost the Immersion.

So unless you are teaching a new GM the tricks of the trade - don't tell your Players anything about what's going on behind the curtain. It's more fun for them, and probably improves the quality of their experience overall.