Seth Ben-Ezra: RPG designer

Seth Ben-Ezra

Seth Ben-Ezra doesn’t just play role-playing games–he writes them. By day, the 32-year-old mild-mannered (and I mean mild-mannered) Peorian with a wife and six children is a systems team leader at Samaritan Ministries. Apart from that, Seth blogs here and creates a variety of role-playing games. But what goes into that creation? Glad you asked … Here’s Seth’s answer to Question 1. The next two or so will follow in coming days.

Why are you so entranced with role-playing games?

In order to answer the question, I should probably explain what a roleplaying game is. The simplest explanation is that a roleplaying game is a game of make-believe, similar to what children play. However, unlike the children’s game, a roleplaying game is organized make-believe. The rules tell the players what kinds of things they are allowed to say in the game, and oftentimes the rules add uncertainty or randomness to the imaginary events to keep things interesting. For example, in my detective roleplaying game Dirty Secrets, the game randomly determines the murderer so that all the players are surprised at the outcome.

So, what is so appealing to me about a bunch of grown-ups playing make-believe? The answer rests in the power of stories.

One reason that we tell stories is to try to explain life to each other. This isn’t necessarily a difficult concept. Consider the story of “Little Red Riding Hood”. This is a story about the dangers presented by strangers and outsiders, especially to young women. (This is particularly apparent in the French version of this story, where the wolf eats Little Red Riding Hood. No rescue from the woodcutter in this version!)

Or, for that matter, consider the classic film Die Hard. John McLane is so sympathetic because he is putting his life on the line to protect his wife. (His estranged wife, I might add.) As such, Die Hard actually exemplifies a honoring of marriage that is somewhat surprising for a Hollywood film.

But these are all stories told to the masses by “professionals”. What roleplaying games allow us to do is create homebrew stories formed from the thoughts, questions, and concerns of our immediate community. Through roleplaying games, people can make stories about the things that they care about. Through these stories, the players can talk to each other about their hopes, their dreams, their fears.

I have this nagging sense that some examples would be helpful. So, I’ll talk about some specific stories that arose from roleplaying games to show what I’m talking about.

If you’ve never heard of Japanese mecha anime, then the idea of Bliss Stage is going to sound more than a little strange. In this game, you all pretend to be teenage resistance fighters who survived an alien invasion of Earth. Since the aliens exist in a dream world, you fight them by forming a large robot in the dream world from your relationships with the people around you and using it to attack them. Thus, the damage that your robot suffers in combat is reflected in your relationships with those people.

I told you it was a little strange.

So, our resistance cell was located in the ruins of Peoria, which is where I live. Over the course of the game, it became increasingly obvious that the group was fighting a losing battle. There were simply too many threats to this little community in the city. So, at the end of the story, they pulled up stakes and left, heading north into the country to find a safe haven.

This ending bothered me. I didn’t want the cell to leave. I wanted them to stay and fight, to the death if necessary! But why?

Upon some reflection, I realized that this story had connected with me because I saw parallels with my experiences with Christians. I look around at the choices being made by Christians to leave the city and live in “safety” in the country. This really bothers me, because you’re supposed to stay and fight. Right?

But, what if you’re not in a good position to fight? What if you’re so hopelessly outnumbered that the wisest course is to withdraw in order to regroup? Could this be what my fellow Christians are doing?

I have found that I have a lot more patience now with the Christian agrarian movement, specifically because of the story we created by playing this game.

Okay, the next game is a bit easier to understand.

Breaking the Ice is a game for two players, where you play two people who have just started dating. Together you play through their first three dates and then, based on how the relationship developed, determine their final fate, either together or separate.

I played this with my wife once. Her character was Candy, a high-strung programmer, working long hours at her stressful job. (If you imagine this character being played by Meg Ryan, you’re on the right track.) My character was Lester, a poor black single father living in the projects, selling drugs in order to support his kids.

In the end, this romance ended up being about so much that is important to my wife and I. Love overcame both race and class divides; it also overcame resistance from her family. The two characters found shared experience in their separate struggles, and they came together to support and carry each other. And sure, they had to sacrifice so much in order to be together, and it certainly wasn’t a picture-perfect ending. But, in the end, they had each other, and that was truly a beautiful thing.

And this is an example of the very personal nature of these stories. This romance arose partly out of the memories that Crystal and I have of our own developing relationship, which was born in fire and shaped by sorrow. So many stood against us, so few stood with us. And yet, we have each other, and it is a beautiful thing.

Lester and Candy’s story was really our story, told to each other to remember where we came from and to reaffirm our love and devotion to each other.

(If you’re interested in reading a fuller write-up of this story, you can go here: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=24600.0)

I wrote A Flower for Mara partly as a memorial to my mother, Linda Ben-Ezra, who died suddenly in July 2003 at the age of 51. This wasn’t the first death of someone close to me. In the first half of 1997, four people who were close to me died, including my paternal grandmother and maternal grandfather. As a result, I’ve had ample opportunity to grieve and to watch others grieve.

So, A Flower for Mara is a game about the family of a woman named Mara who died suddenly in the spring. The group plays through the first year after her death, dealing with the grief and pain and relational fallout. The game is set up to be performed like a play. Instead of sitting at a table, the players stand, walk around, and talk to each other as if they were on-stage. The physicality of the game provides the players with additional emotional connection to the story.

But that’s not all.

At the beginning of the game, each player is given a flower that he will carry during the game. This flower represents his character’s grief over the loss of Mara. During the game, if he decides that his character has begun the process of overcoming his grief, he puts the flower down in a designated place. However, at the beginning of the game, the player also wrote down an actual experience of his that caused him sorrow, grief, or pain. In order to put down the flower, the player must break character and tell the rest of the group about that experience.

In this case, the story functions differently. As we tell each other this story of sorrow and grief, we create a safe place to talk about the things that have hurt us, sometimes quite deeply. And then, we talk.

I don’t repeat the stories that I’ve heard while performing A Flower for Mara. It wouldn’t be right. If you weren’t there, you haven’t earned the right to know. At the same time, I feel responsible somehow for those I’ve performed A Flower for Mara with. They were open and vulnerable with me, for even a moment, and now I feel like I owe it to them to care for them.

I know that roleplaying games often have a bad reputation associated with them. You know, a group of pimply nerds huddled in a basement pretending to be wizards instead of doing something social or useful. However, I actually believe strongly in the power of roleplaying games to enable people to tell each other stories and, in the process, learn to speak to each other honestly.