How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Indy Games

By far the majority of my involvement in roleplaying games has revolved around traditional games.  You know, games where one player acts as GM, people roll dice, and engage with the game world through a series of structured rules. My experience of Indy roleplaying games was probably not unique; I found they could be great fun when you had like-minded people at the table, but they could be excruciating when authority was turned over to the players, and there was no common ground.

What I really appreciated was the mix of fantastic ideas and innovative rules, albeit with some limitations from my perspective. For example, Fiasco enables great stories, although it doesn't give much support to resolve stories, Dread has a cool mechanic for building tension amongst players, although this is disconnected from 'horror' of the scenario, Apocalypse World (and its many hacks) do a fantastic job of introducing and integrating characters, although the framework of 'moves' can be simultaneously bland and highly variable.

These games introduce something new and unique in the way that players interact with their characters, the game world, and ultimately with each other.  To my mind, games like these are avant-garde, in that they are experimental, innovative and, ultimately, beautiful in their ability to influence, inspire and entertain.

Whereas, by contrast, there seems to be a plentiful abundance of traditional games, acres of pages outlining classes, combat rules, skill checks and so on.  These games are fun too, I mean no disrespect, but they are more similar than different, and few have the ability to take my breath away with the elegance of an idea or concept

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When I decided to design my own games, it is no surprise that I looked to Indy games for inspiration. I've previously posted about my process for designing games like EPOCH and Wicked Lies & Alibis, so I won't waste your time by repeating myself.

Over time I've developed an ethos to my own design, drawn from traditional, Indy and actual play - something like this:

• players need time to live in the skin of their characters, and interact, before final decisions are made, so the character should evolve over the course of the game
• key game decisions should be made through collaboration between players
• players should be supported to engage their imagination, so they don't have do all the heavy lifting
• and, ideally, this supports players who are less confident, or who don't enjoy being put on the spot
• game materials should support easy 'at a glance' play at the tabletop to support immersion

For me these things are as essential as page numbers, headings and accessible writing.

My recent offerings, like Death of Legends and my recent Game Chef entry Fragment have moved even further down this path.  They are both simpler (in that they focus entirely upon a packaged game experience) and more complex, in the layering of rules and concepts.   

To me these seem to be the next natural evolution of this design process - but I can't help wonder, if I've now moved so far even beyond mainstream Indy gaming that my games risk becoming largely ignored and unplayed because there are so many implicit assumptions, and the game experience is not easily discernible from a read through. 

Is this Art for its own sake? Or simply an exercise in narcissism.