The Onieromancer is the home of Frederick Foulds, a games designer and archaeologist based in the North East of England.
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Becoming the unreliable narrator
As I've gotten older, I've found myself becoming increasingly nostalgic for the early days of my involvement with the gaming hobby—trying to match the experience of first encountering things like Fighting Fantasy books, Joe Dever's Lone Wolf, and the BECMI D&D books I was gifted at the age of about nine or ten. It's something of a nonsense; those experiences have been and gone, and searching for them again distracts you from what you can experience now, in the present. There are still new revelations within the hobby that I've come across recently, from the Grimdark painting techniques that I've recently been trying out on some of my miniature painting, to the indie approaches to RPGs and miniature wargaming that have opened my eyes to whole new ways of approaching these genres. As I approach 40 years of age, I have to force myself to realise that there are still things I can learn and new experiences to be gained that match those from my youth. It is perhaps because those early experiences are so formative that we dwell on them more than may be necessary...
My nostalgia has had another side effect though, which is partly underpinned by my day-to-day job as a researcher and an archaeologist. This is an increasing desire to learn more about the history of the hobby. Initially focussing on the history of RPGs—reading through books such as Jon Peterson's Game Wizards and Michael Witwer's Empire of the Imagination, and listening to the When We Were Wizards podcast—I have found myself also drawn to the early history of Games Workshop, the UK company that was positioned to bring the roleplaying hobby over to Britain and which later transitioned wholly to miniature wargaming with Warhammer. Games Workshop played a huge role in my early life, growing up in the 90s. Following these lines of research has been interesting, allowing for a behind the scenes look at the early days of GW through books like Dice Men and Talking Miniatures, as well as watching the multitude of video interviews with staff that can be found on YouTube. It's watching one of these videos recently that sparked off the idea to write this post.
MS Paints put out a video interview with Gav Thorpe and Andy Chambers, former game designers/developers for Warhammer 40K, ostensibly to promote their new game Zeo Genesis. But it was a comment about Rick Priestly's and Nigel Stillman's approach to games design that got me thinking. In the video, Andy Chambers explained how Rick and Nigel's background and interest in archaeology influenced their work. In archaeology, we rely on the evidence we uncover to try and present an understanding of the past. However, that understanding is never complete—it is fragmentary because the material record we have available to us is also fragmentary. There is only so much of a story we can put together. However, as new lines of evidence and new artefacts emerge and are added to our repetoire, our understanding and the storys we tell evolve. Andy explained how Rick Priestly wrote permissive backgrounds to the worlds he created, understanding that these mythologies would grow and evolve as time went on and new 'evidence' came to light, the principle being not to paint yourself into a corner. How do you do that? You become the unreliable narrator, presenting world building information as coming from suspect sources that might be contradicted. Don't act within definitives, but provide the room for flexibility.
As an archaeologist myself, this resonated with me. In part because it is accurate. There are certainly archaeologists out there who present their research in terms of definitive statements—the evidence shows this, so that must be true. In some cases, the archaeology supports or refines those statements. However, more often than not, we end up with new evidence appearing that shatters our understandings and forces us to change tack. The PI on the project I am currently working on puts it best when he describes archaeologists as storytellers, and the best amongst them are those who are willing to hold their hands up and say that they were wrong, or better yet kill their own stories and drive them in new directions.
Andy Chambers' statement above forced me to view concepts of games design and worldbuilding—whether for tabletop wargaming or RPGs—alongside my own approaches to archaeology that I employ in my day-to-day job and realise that there is plenty of room for cross pollination. Focusing on the concept of the unreliable narrator, this is something we do in archaeology quite often. We make statements such as "The evidence supports..." or "This suggests that...". We can do the same in world building to allow us some flexibility in our designs so that, as Andy Chambers says, we don't paint ourselves into corners. This goes hand in hand with common advice for world building that you shouldn't try and create a world in one go. For example, the usual advice for those starting something like a hex crawl is to start small; one hex and those surrounding it can keep players entertained for a surprisingly long time. But we can build the concept of being something of an unreliable narrator into the mix, allowing us to seed information that is flexible rather than fixed.
You could state definitively that the people in the neighbouring valley are violent cultists who despise outsiders and raid those who don't follow their religion. But that statement is fixed. But what if you tweak it and say that the local settlers in the village you've just encountered say that their neighbours are bloodthirsty cultists. Are the villagers unreliable narrators? Right now, we don't know, but the flexibility is there. Perhaps they are telling the truth. Perhaps they have a vendetta against their neighbours and are trying to direct the players to service their grudge. Perhaps its not all their neighbours, but a dangerous group who is oppressing them. We don't know until new information comes to light, and we play to find that new information out. Making information and story elements less static and more flexible allows for twists and turns that can be surprising not only to the players, but also to the GM, so long as they allow themselves to be unreliable narrators and for their own statements to be contradicted where it serves the story by making it more interesting and exciting.