Herding Cats
1000 word RPG theory metaphor challenge
2017-12-04: Vivian Abraham
I’m not even sure where it came from, but for a long time the folks I gamed with in college referred to trying to get any group of geeks to do something to be “herding cats.” As an idiom, it’s relatively new, but certainly useful. The problem isn’t that cats are lazy and stubborn and don’t want to go anywhere, or that they rarely agree on which direction to go, or that they frequently do amazingly cute things that make you forget that you are supposed to be herding them, it’s that cats do all of these things. Thus, any group of cats brings numerous simultaneous challenges.
Running a game, in the traditional gamemaster role, is an exercise in herding cats. And dividing the gamemaster responsibility between the cats is unlikely to reduce the number of challenges faced. Many games are written as though the players are herd animals: predictable in their desire to follow the story wherever it goes. In these games, providing a simple incentive (say, experience points) is deemed sufficient to motivate players to do whatever is required to gain that incentive. There are certainly players who play this way. But, in my experience, they have been gaming together for the last twenty years, using their own incomprehensible home-brew system, and they are unlikely to want to play any of your new-fangled “indie” games, thankyouverymuch.
Increasingly common these days are games that are written as though the players are pack animals: a tightly knit group of wolves who will all work tirelessly together for the good of the pack. In such games the incentive is meta, for all present to enjoy the game. This is a very worthy ideal, and rarely survives contact with actual players. The players who play games in this way are, again, in my own personal experience, all game designers themselves. They are there less to play a game and more to support the idea of gaming and help their friends put the finishing touches on their latest endeavor.
In fact, I still believe that most players are cats: fluffy innocent newbie kittens, scarred and muscular mousers, and asshole housecats that demand to be fed until they puke all over your floor. They have wildly varying attention spans, they barely acknowledge each other’s needs, and they are unlikely to show any gratitude for your endless attempts to please them.
Now, let’s be clear: I’m totally a cat person. As I type this on my laptop, I am surrounded by giant balls of fluffy mayhem that are curled up, purring, and absorbing my body warmth. They occasionally demand pets, and I am happy to provide them. Gaming is sort of the same thing. I like running games. I will even run games at conventions and gaming stores, places where the pack mentality of “let’s all just have fun together” is laughably unlikely to occur. And when I read games, I like to see support for the gamemaster who has to deal with herding cats under adverse circumstances.
So what do I mean, specifically, by game design that helps you to herd cats? Well, here’s a few things that I try to put in my game design (and look for in the design of others):
1. There should be more than one way to play the game, and it should be assumed that each player is playing the game in their own way. This is one reason I like class-based systems: they inherently provide for different play styles. Some players will want to plan their actions ten steps in advance, and some will absolutely refuse to do so. Your game should work for both, and specifically, both in the same group.
2. The rules should provide the gamemaster with some methods of dealing with player versus player conflict. Note that I didn’t say character versus character. If there is PvP in the game, it should be fun to win and fun to lose. If there is no PvP in the game, there should be a way to deal with players who refuse to work together. There should absolutely be a way to handle situations where a player is harmed by the content of the game or the conduct of their fellow players.
3. There should be space in the game for naps. Players, like cats, simply can’t be “on” for endless amounts of time. You can have shorter game sessions, for example. And if you have longer ones, you can have divisions between scenes. Even hard-core grognards get sleepy during four hours of turn-based combat and need a break.
4. The game should give the gamemaster a laser pointer. Some amazingly cool thing that is introduced and immediately fascinates and draws the attention of all the players. If you have a game that has no gamemaster, the rules should not rely on one of the players to have brought a laser pointer.
In big picture terms: it’s important to remember that your players are individuals. And more than that, they value their individuality highly. They don’t want to give up their agency, their sense of what is fun, and their loveable (or not so loveable) quirks, just to sit down together to play a game. In fact, the games that they will enjoy are not necessarily the games that will enable them to function as a highly precise killing machine, or even a well-rehearsed group of actors. They will enjoy messy games, with conflicts and jokes and tangents. The story will go in directions that no one could possibly have anticipated. And the best games played by cats will be superior in every way to a game played by herd animals, gathering their XP with a slow and steady pace, or even to a game played by wolves, dividing their spotlight time carefully with one eye always directed toward the good of the group.
When I am actually running the games, I wish (frequently!) that my players would just behave themselves at the table, get along with everyone, and follow the damned plot. But even when those things aren’t happening, having cats as players is still very rewarding. They will always surprise you and are endlessly fun to watch, even as they manage a total party kill before ever leaving town.