Steve Hatherley
In the mid-90s I co-wrote a PG Wodehouse freeform for 25 people. The freeform is called Midsummer Mischief, and we ran it for the second time at Convulsion 2000. While it was generally a great success, it wasn’t the complete and utter success that we had hoped for. A couple of the players didn’t have an entirely fabulous time with the game.
Unfortunately, that’s not that unusual. It’s a sad fact that, for whatever reason, one person can take a part and have the time of their life while another hates it completely. It might be poor casting, it might be bad luck - but sometimes it’s a badly-written character.
Obviously we didn’t deliberately write poor characters into Midsummer Mischief, but following the second run there appeared to be a problem with Popjoy. Now, this might have been a problem with casting or just bad luck. However, in Midsummer Mischief’s first run, it appears that Popjoy’s player also had a couple of problems with the character. That made it two for two, and definitely worth a closer look. So with the criticisms in mind, we looked at Popjoy again in the harsh light of day - and sure enough, there were a couple of problems with him. It’s not that he was particularly bad, it’s that he was not good enough.
The main problem was that he was tied to two other characters too closely. If they didn’t interact with him properly (because they were doing other things) then there was a reasonable chance that his game would suffer as a result.
So we brainstormed and came up with a few fixes. We provided stronger links to other characters and plots so that he would have more to do and wasn’t so reliant on those two characters for a good time. We also gave him a teensy problem to sort out (problems are always great). Of course, we won’t know if the rewrite worked until next time we run it.
(It was a lesson I think we’ve learnt and should serve us well for writing characters for future games: make sure everyone has lots of links to other people so that if one flounders, their game isn’t ruined.)
However, once you start changing your freeform, where do you stop?
The great thing about freeforms is that they never play the way you expect. In fact, I’ve stopped “expecting” them to be played in any particular manner - it saves me from getting stressed because things aren’t going according to plan.
Similarly, players don’t always make use of everything in a game. Some details don’t get used, for whatever reason.
For example, being set in the world of PG Wodehouse, there are one or two impostors present in our game. And there are a number of impostor disguises available for those who might want them. Now, in the first run almost nobody used the impostor disguises at all. We were slightly disappointed in this, and made a couple of very minor changes to encourage impostors where we could.
And in our second run, there were impostors all over the place. I think most of the disguises were used at one time or another.
Was the increase in impostor roles a result of our tinkering, or just a matter of different people doing different things with the game? I don’t know - I don’t think there’s any way to tell. And did the lack of impostors reduce the fun in the first game? Not at all - both games appeared to be a roaring success (despite the problems with Popjoy and a couple of the others).
So was there, therefore, any point to our tinkering?
There are still some aspects of the game that have never been explored. A couple of secrets still kept hidden, a couple of contingency envelopes that have never been used. Should we carry on tinkering to make sure these aspects come out in the game? Even if we do the tinkering, there’s no guarantee that the players will pick up on those secrets or open those envelopes anyway.
Ultimately, we’ve only run it twice. That’s not really enough to be able to tell if we have a problem or not. If I rolled a die twice in succession and both times it came up six, should I immediately conclude that there’s something wrong with it? Of course not. (Unfortunately re-rolling the die is a little easier than re-running Midsummer Mischief. I doubt we’ll ever run it enough times to get a statistically meaningful result.)
Now, this has been the topic of some discussion. One of the authors wants to make the changes. I don’t. I want to fix Popjoy (because that’s a real problem, something that needs to be fixed), but I don’t want to change something for the sake of changing it. As far as I am concerned, there’s a point where you need to say “enough”. You’ll never write a perfect game - it doesn’t exist. It can’t exist - players will always mess up your grand designs, no matter what you write. So there’s a point where the tinkering has to stop. You have to accept that your game is as good as it’s ever going to be.
There’s also a point where tinkering won’t actually improve the game - only change it. You need to be able to say, “Okay, I think that’s it. Let’s work on the next game.”
But recognising that point? And reaching some kind of consensus with your co-authors? As we’re finding out, that’s a different matter completely.
This article appeared in slightly different form in the Convulsion 94 programme book and may be re-published as long the following paragraph is included at the end of the article and as long as you link to the URLs:
Article by Steve Hatherley. Steve is an active freeformer in the UK and has written a number of freeforms. For more information about UK freeforms, please visit uk-freeforms.wikidot.com. Steve is also a partner of Freeform Games LLP and has a website dedicated to freeform-style murder mystery games: http://www.great-murder-mystery-games.com