Nowhere Kingdom, and Public Play

In Nowhere Kingdom, the players take the role of a council of advisors and gentry charged with suggesting policies and proposals to the ruling Demons of the Kingdom. Thankfully, these demons are not evil; just mildly cruel, mostly bored, and they only get to rule the Kingdom for a year — their price for overthrowing the previous tyrant.

As the game progresses, random problems land on the council-table and the council-members must all come up with proposals to solve them. The demons then vote for who created the most funny, chaotic, and unpredictable policy. Whomever wins gets a token, and then the council-members must answer one of a list of questions to help develop how this enacted policy helps, hinders, pleases, or displeases the town, council, demons, and citizenry.

The Demons are played either by the other players between proposals or by the audience.

Wait, audience?

With the advent of Youtube, Twitch, and social medias of all kind, there has been an expansion in recent years in the act of watching play. It used to be the exclusive purview of sports, but now we have streamers who play games of all kinds — not against each other, but playing alone, akin to watching someone shooting hoops instead of an official NBA game. Add in the popularity of Let’s Play podcasts and streams like Critical Role, and “performing RPGs” has come into its own as a distinct genre.

Nowhere Kingdom takes the obvious next step. What if your audience was also roleplaying?

I mean, it’s not really roleplaying, is it? Just voting? That puts the game more in line with TV game-shows and singing competitions than actual RPGs, doesn’t it?

Well, I suppose there is a difference between “Vote for who you like best because this is a competition,” and “Vote for what you think is funniest because you are a demon.” True, if the MC of the night turned to the audience after every round and asked, with a smile on their face, “Okay, ‘demons,’ how many of you vote for the dolphin-slingshot proposal?” then I’d say that was little more than a new kind of reality TV show.

But if the players roll their dice, discuss the problem, and then turn to the audience with faces half-fearful, half-hopeful, and say “Oh great and royal legion of toe-twisters and pube-pullers, I beseech thee, hear my proposal to save the kingdom from famine…I beg you grant us leave to build giant slingshots on our ocean’s beach, to catch the innocent and frolicking dolphins in their nets and hurtle them through the air over our barren fields to land…on our roofs and streets…to help feed our hungry populous. Think of the destruction caused by flying dolphins, and…some people might even get hurt!”

Now that…that might be a bit more like an RPG.

After all, what are RPGs if not a bit of math and die-rolling with a story layered on top? Looked at that way, why wouldn’t layering a bit of theatre on top of a competition show be enough to make it an RPG?

Something interesting happens when you look at roleplay as a performance. Around our tables, with an audience of rarely more than four to seven, we straddle the line between personal and performative. We trust our fellow gamers as we put on personas and act out improvisational stories. Add in cameras and microphones and suddenly it is not just for us, but for others that we perform.

The role of theatre and acting in society is a well-trodden space for sociological study, and I have neither the time, intelligence, nor inclination to read all the research and summarize it for you here. Suffice it to say, this is a whole new kettle of fish for the RPG medium.

Because sitting around a table and acting like a hero or adventurer is certainly a kind of theatre, isn’t it? And interactive theatre is not new; go all the way back to Commedia dell’arte and the British pantos to see how onlookers have always been a part of the proceedings. Heck, look at the participation in midnight-showings of Rocky Horror Picture Show or The Room.

So am I saying that pantos and Rocky Horror are all RPGs? No, not exactly…but I do think they involve roleplay.

Consider how the audience may dress up for the performances. Consider how people will say and do things that they never would in any other circumstance. Consider how there are rules of a sort, about when to speak, shout, and throw toast. Consider how, if you aren’t willing to call it a game, you might at least be willing to call it playing.

Looked at that way, when we’re all sitting around our tables, are we the audience? Is the GM the only real performer while the audience puts on the clothes of a wizard or a space captain or a secret agent?

In his discussion of /The Beginner’s Guide/, Ian Danskin of Innuendo Studios details the importance of the audience in the creation of a story. They are as much participants as anything else, even if they are doing nothing but watching passively, because — much as sound may not exist without someone to hear it — there is no story without them. The mere act of observation requires interpretation, and that interpretation is integral to the act of writing, telling, or performing a story.

One of the most interesting parts of experimenting with a medium is blending it into other mediums. Movies borrow techniques from the boxed panels of comic books. There are songs that are stories. Words become paintings. The line between sculpture and dance is blurred.

Theatre becomes a game. RPGs become theatre.

Perhaps someday there will be RPGs that nowadays we would only recognize as some kind of formalized dance, a mutual retelling of ancient legends and shared heritage. Perhaps LARPs will become massive affairs, with rules as simple and widespread as the rules of conversation.

Or maybe they already did, long ago?

Maybe that’s a bit too far for you. It’s a bit far for me, at any rate, but I don’t think its too far to say that someday there will be more RPGs designed for public play. Games that don’t just live around the table or through the computer screen, but fill the room, blending audience and performance into one cohesive whole.

I don’t know what that RPG might look like — I’m not nearly that creative — but I know other people are, and someday, if we’re lucky, we’ll play the fruits of their labors.