I’ve become fascinated by the trend
of people playing Role-Play Games on YouTube, Twitch, and pretty much any other
streaming service you can think of. I’ve watched several of them Critical Role,
RollPlay, The Dragon Friends, Acquisitions Inc. Girls Gut’s & Glory, and
Fiasconauts. They all focus on different games and group dynamics. There are
funny ones, serious ones, scary ones, and exciting ones. Even the gambit of
genres is impressive.
While watching these various shows I’ve
started to notice a few things. There are things you definitely want to have. A
good group that’s focused on the game. While you want to be able to go off on tangents
and let the players run amok with their decisions you want to stay focused on
the game. You can have tangents and off shoots but they should remain grounded
in the game. To some extent this is on the Game Master or GM to focus. It’s
okay to allow the players to get a bit weird but be able and prepared to swing
the group back to the story.
You want to have a clear view of the
players, a decent audio connection is recommended but not necessarily video. You
can all be in one room or broadcast over Skype or Google Hangouts, just be
clear. I’ve been listening to some of these groups as podcasts where you can’t
see the players but can hear the things they’ve said clearly and that helps
keep the images alive in my mind.
Imagery, you want a GM who can
describe things, paint a picture with your words. “You ride across the dust
covered wasteland. The static roar from the engine of your retooled ‘76 Charger
resounds off the hastily welded armored plates. The sprayed on black paint job
glistens despite the slug trails of blobbed paint from where you had to drive
before it had even dried.” Sounds significantly better than, “It looks totally
like Mad Max.” Of course both will conjure roughly the same image, but one is
far superior in visual scope.
You want players who are slightly
fearless and largely selfless. It’s okay to be nervous, afraid, skittish, or
even a bit terrified that you’re going to be on the internet. However, it
shouldn’t hold you back from playing. But you don’t want to be pushing your character
to the front of the line at every opportunity. While D&D may be a game
about gather treasure and defeating the monsters (sometimes) in a streaming
situation you need to remember to let everyone step forward. Some of this falls
on the GM. It’s their responsibility to reign in any player who starts to take
over a bit much.
Finally, you want a game that’s
focused on story and not on mechanics. Something that’s easy to do, quick to
run, and fast to maintain. If a rules mistake is made you don’t want to spend
time going over the rule book to see what you should be doing. It’s okay to fudge
a rule here and there in the name of expedience and entertainment.
Ultimately, I think the last word of
the previous paragraph was the important one, Entertainment. I know you want to be a good story and exciting time
for the players, but you need to be, in some way, entertaining for the
audience. This doesn’t mean, telling jokes every five minutes, or being the
funniest, silliest, or most over the top. It can mean being dramatic, exciting,
intriguing, and even scary at times. I think the key to this is to have players
who make good characters not good character stats, and a GM who let’s those
characters play. You don’t have to have an epic description of every action, or
an amazing cut scene for each character, but if you let the characters be
themselves and tell the story you can achieve something amazing; something entertaining.
The more I watch these, the more
fascinated I become. I want to try this myself. I want to put together a game
on my own, grab some friends I think will be a good fit for it, and go forward
with an attempt to record one session, just to see how it works…
If I do this, what game would folks recommend
I try?
What would you like to see?
What could I write well?
