Thoughts Regarding Host Style
By Sabrina Hawthorne
To begin - massive credit both to Julie Coker and Gabe for talking about this with me at length. This framework is as much theirs as it is mine - I'm just the one with the blog.*
A few days ago as of this writing, Matt Colville published a video to his youtube channel essentially positing a question: how might we begin talking in concrete terms about a Play Host's style? It was an interesting question, so I set about trying to describe my own style - here's where I've landed.
I: Goals, Procedures, and Questions
We begin with a framework of design. When a table is playing a traditionally structured game session (meaning, oppositional problem solving with a Host/Guest dynamic), the Host will inevitably bring three elements to the table:
I.I: Goals
Goals are anything which drives a character or party thereof. Goals can be as concrete or general as you like, and can be universal between party members or vary between them. They are both the thing a party is striving for - Steal the Cash - and the motivations (shared or individual) for pursuing that thing - give the cash to the impoverished workers.
I.II: Procedures
Procedure generally it refers to the logic used to mediate the shared fiction at the table. System is implicit in this of course, but the core idea is how a table goes about resolving tensions and conflicts in ludic and narrative terms. A game like Monsterhearts - check it off your bingo cards - uses the logic of teenage romance and urban gothic horror to filter its conflicts and build a scenario.
I.III: Questions
Questions, or more accurately Dramatic Questions, are the tensions and uncertainties within a game's fiction. They come in two broad flavors: what Julie Coker calls Points of Inflection ("Will the Heroes...?") and what I'll call Hooks ("Why do the children of the village keep sleepwalking into the mausoleum?"). The first come up maybe dozens of times over the course of a session; they're the moments when most games tell you to get out the dice. The latter are plot hooks and central tensions; larger, open-ended questions which drive exploration and investigation.
I.IV: You Need All Three
Any well-structured game, between the system text itself and the materials prepared by the Host, will include all three of these elements. A game of all Goals and Procedures is Chess or Go; not un-fun by any stretch, but you'd have to put in some serious legwork (or game design) to consider it an RPG.
A game of Procedures and Questions without Goals is - and I apologize to any fans reading this - Call of Cthulhu. A game which posits itself as a gritty, methodical look at the inevitable slide into madness that results from poking one's nose into cosmic truths, but which fails to actually build in systems or fictions that might motivate school teachers, plumbers, or office clerks to do all of that nose-poking in the first place, leaving dead air for the table to fill in themselves with little to no guidance.
And a game of all Questions and Goals with no Procedures is just freeform creative writing. As with the no-questions example this is perfectly fine if it's what you want; but arbitrary rules and restrictions - such as the role of the Host itself - are the dividing line between RPGs and more vanilla creative hobbies.
So all games necessarily include all three pillars - but that doesn't mean all games include them equally. I think the first dimension of a Host's style emerges when they emphasize and de-emphasize them in combination.
II: Heists, Mysteries, and Dramas
II.I: Heists
A Heist is the pursuit of a Goal, mediated primarily by the Procedures used to achieve it. Most dungeon crawls live here, obviously, but it's also the home of most heroic, adventure-focused games. Princess-rescuing and zombie-slaying are right at home alongside the namesake of this style, as well as vampire-slaying, loved-one-avenging, and fire-nation-dodging.
Questions exist in Heist-y play, of course; but they arise from the intersection between fiction-driven pursuing of Goals and the system-oriented Procedures which mediate that pursuit. But the drama is emergent; to paraphrase a multitude of experienced Hosts, the story of Heisty play happens in hindsight.
II.II: Mysteries
A Mystery is a situation defined by a central dramatic Question, and follows the Procedures undertaken by one or more investigators to answer it. As you might imagine, the most common type of game to find in this corner are murder mysteries - but as before, genre can very easily stretch here. A lot of horror rpgs slot themselves into this corner, for better or for worse; in the one hand, establishing early on how little the party knows about whatever spooky happenings abound can be quite affective; but establishing that there is a way to gain that knowledge might leave some players a little bored. It's an infamously tough balance to strike.
The implicit Goal in a mystery is tied into its central question; Identify and stop the killer; undo the hex; exhonorate the death-row inmate. But this goal is rather nebulous, lacking the immediacy and clarity of direction found in Heist-play. "break the curse inside the labyrinthine tomb" is one thing; "find the source of the curse afflicting my family," by dint of having no inherent spatial component, generalizes the goal into the background.
II.III: Dramas
A Drama is a scenario populated by characters with distinct and incompatible Goals, and the ensuing dramatic Questions regarding who will achieve their desires and how is the focus of play. Dramas are the home of politics of all kinds, from noble houses to cold-war beaurocracy to the battlefield of love.
Procedure exists in a drama as a social lubricant; a sort of third party conversant which mediates disputes between characters (and players) with irreconcilable wants. It's a way to make sure that nobody produces an everything-proof shield, so to speak.
III: Applying the Framework
I've laid a lot of groundwork here. Let me see if I can justify it by using it to describe my Host style.
III.I: I Run Dramas
I spent a lot of time denying this - a misogynistic impulse, if I'm being honest - but my absolute favorite part of running a game is playing romance. Take my dungeons, take my stat-blocks, take my meticulous world-building; if I cannot play out a Host-PC smooching a Guest-PC or facilitate two or more GPCs doing the same, I'd rather just watch a movie.
Or, if I can't have that, I'll take politics. A table is most interesting to me when my Guests present me with a cast of interconnected characters with diverse and conflicting goals, forced to work together by a common enemy. Better, I enjoy when that common enemy doesn't alleviate but exacerbates those conflicts. The games I'm most proud to have ever run are those which authentically generated one or more evenings of my Guests talking amongst themselves, brokering power and status within the political environment, with my occasional interjection to call for a roll of the dice or to clarify a piece of information.
III.II: Goals > Questions > Procedure
Another way one might describe their style is a hierarchy of preference between my three established pillars of play. My personal hierarchy is Goals above all else; followed by dramatically interesting Questions; followed by Procedure.
No matter what I'm preparing for the night, I always need to have a clear goal to present to my Guests. Without knowing what they're trying to do for the night, nothing else can cohere.
Once a goal has been established, I spice it with dramatic questions. What happens when the town's curse is broken? Are there people or factions who have made themselves dependent on the affects of the curse? Are there those who will become angry upon it being broken for political reasons? Will breaking the curse cause the tomb to start collapsing around the heroes? These are the soil from which interesting player choice arises.
Then, Finally, I implement Procedure to mediate the places where Guest and Prep meet. You may be aware I'm in favor of wearing the handcuffs and playing a game by following its rules - but this desire is instrumental. I feel that listening to the rules I'm using is almost always the best way to get the most out of the Goals and Questions I have prepped. That said, if I had to forego one of these pillars entirely, it'd be this one.
IV: Just a Start
While there is obviously so much more to Hosting a game than just these pillars, I've found that even just defining the framework in the first place has helped me better understand what is and isn't fun for me to bring to the table, and made me really excited to play games that I know fit into my Hosting preference. My hope is to continue the conversation Matt started in his video, and maybe give readers a way to think about their own styles.
Endnote: I'm No Longer the Only One with the Blog
I'm excited to announce that Julie Coker is joining on as a co-author on RPGs Are BDSM! She and I have been close collaborators ever since we met, and she's behind a huge amount of what I put into the world. She'll be getting her own intro post in time, but for now, get hyped! She's not just a brilliant mind but a brilliant writer, and I'm excited for you to hear from her.