The point of this blog is to talk about games and story telling, and so today I felt I'd go back to videogames, and to a video post that has had me thinking very heavily about how important, and how much, mechanics can do in a game system. If you let them, and design them to do it, game mechanics can tell a story on their own. So, watch this video and then lets talk about it a bit.
Now, I don't know about you, but I for one never thought about Missile Command like that. Sure I saw the choices, and the efficiency, but I never thought of it from the perspective of what you are actually doing. That you are letting people die to protect other cities, that you are being forced to choose between which areas to defend, what to do with your limited supplies, and the fact that no matter what you can't win. Looking at it like that, it is a very compelling narrative, and I really think I like it.
So, how does that apply to RPGs? It isn't quite as easy to make mechanics there tell a story, but there is a lot you can do with them when running the game, or when designing it. Running the game, the idea of those choices can be very powerful. Designing the game, the rules you put in play are going to shape the decisions that people have to face. If you put in rules for dueling, then people will likely have to choose about dueling. If you put in mechanics to enable PCs to kill others casually, then that is something they may have to deal with.
The other thing to take out of this though? That no matter how you encourage or prompt people to come to these decisions, some people just may not see the importance of the decision, or everything that is going on behind it. There's no real way to drive these in to them unless you are GMing. Then, you may just need to point it out, or you may need to actually show the consequences to them once or twice.
Either way, just keep this in mind. Especially if you're playing Missile Command in the near future.