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Monday
Mar122012

In Praise Of The
Interactive Toolkit
Monday, March 12, 2012 at 2:15PM

There are a lot of people out there discussing

roleplaying game design, or offering their
particular advice on such matters. Some of
that information I find useful and thought-
provoking, some of it not so much, but
overall I think it’s a great thing that these
discussions are occurring. The Internet has
made it possible to talk about these subjects
(and so many others) in a way that simply
wasn’t possible in the early years of the RPG
hobby.

One of my favorite bits of RPG design advice

is the Interactive Toolkit, four essays by
Christopher Kubasik that first appeared in
1995 as a column in issues 50-53 of White
Wolf Inphobia magazine. Many of the
concepts they discuss are now regarded as
sort of “common sense knowledge” among
game designers and gamers who like to read
about game design. But I believe that when
they were published, Kubasik was among the
first to write about them. I think if his articles
had become better known among RPGers in
general Kubasik would today be regarded as
one of the forerunners or trailblazers of
today’s “indie” or “story” games “movement,”
and deservedly so.

I know the Interactive Toolkit was the first

place I encountered many of the ideas
Kubasik wrote about. It was very eye-opening
for me in many ways, and to one degree or
another it’s influenced many of my
approaches to game design ever since. Before
I start working on a new RPG design I often
sit down and read the four articles again, just
to refresh my recollection and get the ol’
mental gears working in the proper
alignment.

So herewith, by way of praise, is a brief

summary of each of them. You can find a link
to the full articles online down at the bottom
of this blog if you’d like to read them for
yourself.

Part One, Simulation Or Story? discusses the

basic nature of roleplaying games. It argues
that RPGs as of that time were still far more
like wargames than storytelling, and suggests
that game designers might be better served to
look more at how stories work in novels and
movies when designing RPGs. It raises the
intriguing point that events in stories are
uncertain, not random, and thus that wholly
random mechanics like rolling dice may not
work well for RPGing.

While I’ve written elsewhere that I

think the failed roll could be
considered one of the central concepts
of roleplaying games, I also think Kubasik
has a valid point — we all hate to see what’s
shaping up to be a good story derailed by a
bad roll at the wrong time. The article
suggests the possibility of using something
else, such as cards, to create a set of
resolution mechanics that are more
“uncertain, but not random.” Ever since
reading that I’ve tried on numerous occasions
to devise just such a mechanic. I’ve never
been 100% satisfied with the results, but my
gaming group has enjoyed the fruits of my
experiments from time to time, and I have no
doubt one of these days I’ll get it “right.” ;)

Part Two, Why Do Modules Suck?, looks at

the concept of published RPG adventures. Its
central point is that when gaming was just
D&D, and D&D was so simple and
straightforward that everything a character
wanted could be obtained by killing monsters
and going up in levels, it was easy to design
adventures that many different gaming
groups could use. Once the idea of achieving
goals in other ways — diplomacy, trickery,
finance, whatever — was introduced,
designing a published adventure became
increasingly difficult (and resulted in
products of less usefulness to many gamers)
because there’s no possible way to account
for any of the infinite number of ways Player
Characters might try to achieve their goals.

Speaking as someone who’s written more

than a few “modules,” I see wisdom here. I
vividly recall that whenever I wrote an
adventure for one of the Star Trek RPGs I
worked on, the key thing, after settling on the
basic concept, was answering the question,
“OK, how can I prevent the PCs from f**king
this up with the transporter?”. Paramount
didn’t care enough about continuity to
monitor what Trek’s writers did in episodes
and address the long-term
consequences/implications of each episode’s
events. But viewers paid attention to those
things, and at any given Trek RPG session
there was gonna be at least one guy who
knew all the things that could be done with a
transporter... many of which could ruin most
“standard” sort of Trek stories. Similarly,
adventures for superhero RPGs such as
Champions, when properly written, are often
extremely long because a responsible author
will try to help the GM prepare for any of the
possible superpowers characters can use in
crucial situations — and that list of powers
and what happens when you use ’em is long
indeed.

This part of the Interactive Toolkit also

introduces the intriguing concept of the Fifth
Business, borrowed from Robertson Davies’s
novel of the same name. That novel, which is
about opera companies, describes the Fifth
Business thus: “You cannot make a plot work
without another man, and he is usually a
baritone, and he is called in the profession
Fifth Business. You must have a Fifth
Business because he is the one who knows
the secret of the hero’s birth, or comes to the
assistance of the heroine when she thinks all
is lost, or keeps the hermitess in her cell, or
may even be the cause of somebody’s death, if
that is part of the plot. The prima donna and
the tenor, the contralto and the basso, get all
the best music and do all the spectacular
things, but you cannot manage the plot
without the Fifth Business!”

Kubasik suggests using this term/concept in

place of “Gamemaster” (or Storyteller,
Narrator, Referee, or whatever other term
you prefer). It’s not a bad idea, really (though
it doesn’t adapt perfectly to RPGing, either).
One sad note, though: according to
Wikipedia, there is no such thing as the “Fifth
Business.” Davies confessed in 1979 that he
simply made it up. But I don’t think that
diminishes its value as an idea in Kubasik’s
overall discussion.

Part Three, Character, Character, Character,

discusses the setting of goals and objectives
for Player Characters. The former are long-
term things a PC wants to achieve — essential
elements of his background whose resolution
may bring his story to an end. The latter are
shorter-term things that are stepping stones
toward his goals. “Become rich” and “win the
hand of the Princess” are goals; “kill the
dragon and take its treasure” or “convince the
King that Lord Braxton is a traitor” are
objectives that may lead toward those goals. I
think Kubasik’s analysis of how most players
set themselves up to avoid traditional
dramatic problems rather than embracing
them and thus creating a compelling story is
a good one. I’d love to see more players adopt
his perspective — and more GMs run games
in such a way that they can do so without
feeling victimized.

Part Four, Running Story Entertainments,

wraps up Kubasik’s discussion (or so I think;
I’m not sure if he intended to write more of
these essays). It uses examples from one of
his Pendragon campaigns to illustrate the
points he’s made in the other essays. It also
discusses rules — or the relative lack of them,
in the “story entertainments” Kubasik
envisions. It’s a great conclusion to the series.

Now obviously, it goes without saying that I

don’t agree with everything Kubasik says.
Game design is a rather personal and
idiosyncratic thing in many ways — an “art,”
if you will, rather than a science — so it’s
unlikely any two people who think deeply
about it and try to practice it will agree on
every single aspect of the process. In
particular I don’t agree with his jibes at the
HERO System/Champions, but that’s natural
enough — no one likes to see his baby poked
with a stick, even a metaphorical one. ;)
Nevertheless I think there’s a great deal of
value in Kubasik’s Interactive Toolkit essays,
even today nearly twenty years after they
were published and after the “indie”
“revolution,” and I recommend them to your
attention.
If you’d like to read the full text of the
Interactive Toolkit, you can find it
here.

Steven S. Long | 2 Comments | 8 References | Share Article

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Reader Comments (2)

Regarding the defensive approach to module

writing, I always admired R. Talsorian's now-
forgotten Dream Park RPG (licensed from
the Niven-Barnes sf novels) for its ingenious
co-opting of the players as the GM's
collaborators. The premise of the game
enlists the player characters as willing
participants in a futuristic virtual-reality
theme park where the story presented by the
park's operators is acknowledged to put the
characters on rails. So the very premise
requires the participants (and the players) to
willingly paper over inconsistencies and
engineer ways to keep the storyline on track.
A much healthier GM-player relationship, I
think, than the adversarial standoff implicit
in the "what if they do this?" school of
module design.

March 12, 2012 | Allen Varney

I don't own a copy of the Dream Park RPG,

but I do remember it. I'm sorry I never had
the chance to try playing it; it sounded like an
intriguing style of gaming.

March 12, 2012 | Steven S. Long

Copyright © 2011, Steven S. Long. All rights reserved.