What If We Kissed, and the Great Divide

What If We Kissed calls itself the “same genre of thing as Dungeons & Dragons,” and I understand the mistake.

As I said before, for better or worse D&D is the entry point for most anyone who is curious about RPGs. Unless they have a friend who is both well versed in RPGs and believes D&D is an imperfect introduction to the medium, a newcomer is first going to take a look at D&D. There’s no avoiding it.

I think, personally, that these entry-point properties are a travesty. Imagine if anyone who wanted to get into music always went to Elvis first. What if anyone who wanted to get into movies had to start with Citizen Kane? Imagine what would be lost if that was all people assumed music and movies were, or could be.

There are so many other kinds of RPGs out there that challenge every one of D&D’s ubiquitous traits. There are games without GMs, games with only one player, games without characters, without dice, without almost anything that is integral to the D&D experience.

And more to the point, integral to our own definitions of RPGs.

So what is What If We Kissed about? I’ll let the book speak for itself: “Dungeons & Dragons is a game about salt. It’s about repelling bad things (damage, curses, tragic plot twists) and trying to keep those bits of the game away from your character. On the flip side, What If We Kissed…is a game about sugar. It’s about identifying the things you want and then moving towards them.”

Continue reading and you’ll find even more marked differences. While D&D is a ruleset with charts, rules, and math to figure out what number you have to roll on which dice, What If We Kissed is less a ruleset and more a framework for the act of roleplaying itself.

If you read the D&D Player’s Handbook, you are first greeted by the standard “what is an RPG/how to use this book” section, where the book describes what sort of adventures your characters can get up to. Quote: “The adventurers can solve puzzles, talk with other characters, battle fantastic monsters, and discover fabulous magic items and other treasure.”

Now of course a good GM and willing players can make a D&D game about anything, but I think its significant that these are the suggestions the book offers. Fundamentally, this is what D&D is about: talking, puzzles, combat, and loot; though if you read further you will find lots of rules about combat and loot, and not many when it comes to puzzles and conversation.

What If We Kissed, on the other hand, doesn’t have specific rules for how to do things, or goals for how to overcome obstacles. There is no mention of dice, bonuses, or any amount of math. The character-sheet for What If We Kissed has space for a character’s name, description, subjects to avoid, a scene goal, and a session goal. That’s it. No stats, skills, abilities, anything.

Instead, the game provides a framework for how to interact with your fellow players in improvising a narrative. The book explains concepts like GM, Scene, Main character, and Goals, and how each relates to the other. It encourages vulnerability, and discusses safety tools before even explaining the difference between a GM and a Player. It details a GM’s responsibilities, and then encourages any number of GM and non-GM players, depending on what each player is most comfortable with.

The Main Character’s player of each scene chooses a Scene Goal: something they want to happen to their Main Character before the scene ends. Once the scene starts, the scene doesn’t end until the Scene Goal is reached, assuming the player doesn’t change their mind.

What If We Kissed notes that a Main Character might work against the Scene Goal. The character might struggle to avoid the werewolf, for example, even if the scene goal — what the players want to happen — is getting the character bitten: an acknowledgment of a separation between character and player.

What If We Kissed also provides for something called “Honey.” Honey is a token that any player can give to a GM whenever they do something that the player likes.

If you are familiar with D&D, you may recognize as each of these things as polar opposites of the D&D ethos: Characters and Players are supposed to operate in tandem, the goals and purposes of scenes discovered during play. There is one GM only, and it’s the GM who rewards the players for good play, rather than the other way around.

But why can’t the players reward the GM for good GMing? In fact, I’d say that’s far more important, since the GM usually has the more in-game power when compared to the players.

And why not more than one GM? Why not less than one? Why is one “the right number of GMs for a roleplaying game?”

And why not dictate what people want to get out of a scene before starting it, so that everyone involved has a better idea of where to steer the action?

And why do players and characters have to think the same way about anything?

This is why I call What If We Kissed the Anti-D&D; almost everything about it directly opposes something that the D&D rulebook takes for granted. Even the book length is contrary, What If We Kissed measuring ten pages long while D&D has three separate books for GMs, non-GM Players, and a book of monsters, each measuring at multiple hundreds of pages.

But What If We Kissed is still an RPG. It’s focus is on an entirely different part of the medium, but it is an RPG.

So what’s the synthesis? If we have D&D on one side and What If We Kissed on the other, what actually is an RPG? Where do we start dissecting this sacred cow? What first incision should we make in delving deeper into the innards of our hobby?

Well, I personally think one of the most interesting cuts to make is experiential. After all, we can proscribe and dictate definition to our heart’s content, but none of that matters compared to what different games feel like to play.

And in comparing What If We Kissed to D&D, I can think of one distinct difference at the start. D&D has rules: Board Game-like, it focuses on what your characters can and cannot do based on numbers, dice, and systems. What If We Kissed, on the other hand, cares more about how to roleplay, focusing on player goals and the story surrounding their characters.

This is a core division among RPGs, I daresay the heart of the medium itself. Jekyll and Hyde-like, I believe that RPGs are fundamentally shift back and forth between the two major extremes detailed in the name of the medium itself: the Roleplay vs the Game.

Next time, I’d like to talk about that.