Formulas and Genre Simulation
I wanted to talk a little bit about how I design games. I don’t know that there’s anything particularly revelatory about my process, but as I’ve noticed an increased interest in genre sim (LOWERCASE S, we’re not talking about GNS here), I thought it might be interesting and/or useful. (And, since I promised full disclosure when it came to Blowback, I thought you might like a peek into how the game came about in the first place.)
I’m heavily inspired by media and pop culture. This should be no real shock to anyone remotely familiar with what I do, play, or talk about. When I start really digging on a book/TV show/movie or genre, it makes me want to play games that run in a similar vein. Which, half the time, means that I have to write a game that runs in a similar vein. So I start reading/watching critically, to figure out the formula.
Especially in television, the word “formulaic” is a derogatory dismissal, but almost everything runs off of some kind of formula. Really successful formulas provide a familiar structure while leaving a lot of room for variables, which makes each episode feel fresh and intriguing. The trick is finding the right balance between formula and variable, and making sure the variables are in the right places. So first thing: I consume a lot of the media in question, and I come up with hypothetical versions of the formula, refining until I’ve gotten it down. If I’m going for something genre-broad, I’ll concentrate on one particular inspiration and then cross-check my formula with another property in the same genre, to make sure that things are basically in the same ballpark; normally you’ll see a lot of, but not total, overlap between properties. In this case, for Blowback, I broke down the formula of Burn Notice and cross-checked it with the Jason Bourne trilogy and Spy Game.
The formula for Burn Notice goes like this: there’s a dude* who needs help. There’s a personal mission the main character has (which is a continuous mission throughout the series, a mystery he needs to solve), and he has to take care of his client while juggling his personal mission and his interpersonal relationships. The client missions tend to bring him closer emotionally to his loved ones, and his personal mission tends to drive them away. There is a strong antagonistic relationship between the main characters and a government agency, who serves as the foil.
Checked against the Bourne trilogy: there’s no dude who needs help, just the personal mission (continuous throughout the trilogy, a mystery he needs to solve), and he needs to take care of his loved one (first movie) while juggling that relationship and his personal mission. The personal mission takes the ultimate toll on his relationship. There is a strong antagonistic relationship between the main characters and a government agency, who serves as the foil.
Checked against Spy Game: there’s a dude who needs help. There’s a personal mission the main character has (to retire without incident), and he has to take care of his client while juggling his personal mission. The mission for the client brings him closer to his loved one (which is also the client), and the personal mission involves a strong antagonistic relationship between the main characters and a government agency, who serves as the foil.
Okay, so the formula works. Now on to a brief digression about serial media, which is in and of itself, a formula.
Serial media works on a triple arc: there’s the short-term arc, which is that of an episode or a chapter or a movie subplot. There’s the mid-term, which is that of a television season or a whole book or a whole movie. Then there’s the long-term arc, which is that of a television series, the entire line of books, or the whole movie trilogy. Ideally, in each small unit, each of the three arcs is advanced in relation to their size. Meaning that in each small unit, 100% of the small arc is revealed, less of the medium arc is revealed, and a sliver of the large arc is revealed. So when you look at the three-arc formula, you plug the elements of your genre into it.
Going back to Burn Notice. The small arc is about the client job, the medium arc is about the personal mission, and the large arc is about the mystery that needs solving. (You’ll notice I separated the mission from the mystery, even though I conflate the two earlier in this post. Especially with Michael Westen and Jason Bourne, the emotions of the personal mission— getting revenge— is separate and can be moved forward without necessarily moving the mystery forward in any tangible way.) Awesome. So then you just make mechanics that push these things to happen in those chunks. (Blowback does this with the job structure, the Push Pyramid, and the Agency’s options when rolls are failed.)
Now, there’s always a point at which you’ve modeled things too closely, and it stops being fun and starts just being a fanfic generator. So at each stage of the process, I ask myself “Is this all the structure I need?” in this case, it’s a resounding no. The job-push-failure structure gives me the main characters’ conflict arcs in a vacuum, but doesn’t provide any structure or incentives for making the relationships between the characters come alive. So let’s go back to the Burn Notice formula.
He has to take care of his client while juggling his personal mission and his interpersonal relationships. The client missions tend to bring him closer emotionally to his loved ones, and his personal mission tends to drive them away.
Good. Great. But WHY do the client missions bring him closer emotionally to his loved ones, when his personal mission drives them away? Because the client missions are more sympathetic. They’re dudes in distress. Helping a client is unquestionably good and shows your humanity. Getting involved with the Agency again drives away your loved ones because the Agency uses your loved ones against you, turns them into liabilities, and gets them hurt. So the important thing is to make the clients sympathetic, the Agency dangerous, and relationships easily strained. (Blowback does this with the easy job generator, the push pyramid and other Agency tools, and the stress charts).
Is this all the structure I need? Well, no. There’s a feeling of being all alone in this genre, too— the lone vigilante (backed up with friends). How do you express that dichotomy? And how do you avoid the Wolverine issue— having a group of three or four badass loners who never work together? The non-spies in these properties— Jason’s girlfriend, Michael’s mom— are important, but they don’t follow the same rules as the other main characters. That’s what allows them to be supportive of the spy characters while allowing them to still essentially function like lone badasses. So that has to get modeled too. (In Blowback, the difference between the stress chart for Civilian characters and the stress chart for Professional characters takes care of this.)
The really interesting thing here is the stuff that gets left out when you make a game this way. For example: Blowback doesn’t have a combat system, or hit points, or anything of the ilk. A conflict is a conflict, and the GM can injure you if he makes that move from the Push Pyramid, but that doesn’t mean you get a rock-climbing penalty or anything. Because in this genre, physical injury adds tension, but never concretely endangers a character’s ability to succeed at any given task— whether it’s getting your girlfriend to take you back or breaking out of a Turkish prison.
Anyway, that’s the broad-strokes overview. I’ll make another post soon about identifying variables and exploding options.
