Matryoshka Your Focus
As you pull smaller dolls out of their shell, you get a smaller object that must communicate the same information with less surface area. In a way, it is like a zoom on a camera and just as different shot compositions have different objectives when communicating to the audience, so should you when you run your games. As I see it, the smaller the doll the less freeform you’ve got to work with. I’ve found that there’s five “Zooms” a Director works with, which follow different but tangentally related rules.
DJ, Spin That Scope
Combat is the most zoomed in you can get regarding the game part of a role-playing game. Here time is segemented into Rounds, movement is in Speed and focus is equitably shared between all at the table with the merciless division of Initiative.
Jumping up a doll, you have different rules for a much freer game. The most common example would be a Skill Challenge. Introduced in Dungeons and Dragons formally in 4th Edition, the idea is that the group has to deal with an obstacle. Your players are put into a situation and need a certain amount of passes before failures to determine whether they succeed in overcoming the obstacle. For example, a chase in a city, whether they can Jacquays their way into the castle undetected or perhaps attempting to impress a person of important to gain their patronage. Here, players are given an opportunity to be clever and as a Director you set what are appropriate difficulties, making players pass, fail or allow the decision be told with the toss of the die.
The next wooden bitty is the the investigative phase in a Monster of the Week style game or part of the dungeon delve. If each “Zoomed-in” doll were a different genre of a game, this is the point-and-click adventure computer game. Players interact and ask questions, you may or may not ask for a die to dictate the resulting reaction. This is free form play but there are still rules. A simple litmus test of “What do you do?” asked to your players dictates you’re in the midst of this particular doll.
Trigger Warning for Little Shits at Recess
The fourth doll in this metaphor is when the game portion is subsumed by the role-playing portion of a RPG. This is what the threatre kid lives for. To them, putting on a mask is a fun little game. As a Director, you don’t need to declare “We’re playing House”, everybody knows their roles and there are no lines set in stone.
Lastly, the exterior of the doll is what encapsulates the toy. Prior to the game, this is asking what rumour the players are interested in and what you’ll need to frantically prep. Within the game, this is the Hexcrawl - arguing over which direction to take or talk mechanics above table. After the session, this is the headache of attempting to get the avengers to assemble to have a session to fire. I don’t know why it is so hard when Discord reminds me that this @everyone is going out to over 30 people and if I’m sure to shoot it out. This is the expectations and organization portion of the game, as I’m sure you’d be surprised if you popped open a Matryoshka doll and find yourself mired in a five hour game of Twilight Imperium.
Unlike a regular game where parts of this doll can be neglected or tossed out, a West Marches Hexcrawl needs each of these layers to succeed. We all preferences when playing with our dollies but as the Director, your job is to make sure no layer is neglected. As they say, there’s different strokes for different folks, so make sure to provide the wargamer, theatre kid or outside context champion with moments to succeed. Part of the emergent storytelling is that as the Director I don’t know where this is heading, much less the players, so it is best to make sure you’re familiar with whichever Matryoshka that gets tossed your way.
