In the past few weeks, I participated in two game nights where I experienced the unique concept of Pen & Paper for the first time. I found the approach of these games fascinating: you create an entire world using certain guidelines that don’t have to be strictly followed. These rules are there to help you immerse yourself in the game and to give you a nudge if you get stuck. I had a lot of fun playing and realised that the creative approach to world-building has many parallels with our degree programme and the development of new concepts.
What Exactly is Pen & Paper?
Pen & Paper (also known as Pen-and-Paper Role-Playing Games) is a cooperative role-playing game where players embody characters in a fictional world. A game master narrates the story, describes the environment, and plays the non-player characters. The players respond, make decisions, and influence the course of the story. Everything is managed with pen and paper, dice, and rulebooks.
What are GM-less Pen & Paper Games?
GM-less Pen & Paper games, also known as „GM-free“ role-playing games, do not have a fixed game master. The narrative and administrative tasks are shared among all players. These games use mechanics that support the progression of the game without a single person taking full responsibility. The rules are often flexible and encourage the creative input of all players. Some games provide detailed instructions, while others offer more room for improvisation, ensuring that all players equally contribute to the story.
My Experience with the First Paper&Pen Game I played
In my first game, we played as reporters trying to uncover a story. The story was unclear at the start, and we only had random words that needed to be incorporated into the game later, forming the framework of the plot. Our goal was not just to reveal events but also to develop characters and explore the relationships between them. The game was guided by questions provided with the game. Each turn began with revealing a question that had to be answered or given to another player to answer. This shaped the character and put them in challenging situations if the answers had negative consequences. The game ended once all questions were answered. Although it could theoretically go on indefinitely, we ended it after three hours. Within this time, we developed very different worlds and characters compared to another group of players.
My Experience with the Game Follow
The approach in Follow was slightly different. At the beginning, we roughly imagined our characters and a world where the goal was to find a treasure. We quickly settled on a pirate story as the foundation. After setting up the basics, we faced challenges that we had to overcome through strategic thinking and storytelling. A character could die along the way, but the player would stay in the game, taking on a new character that had previously appeared as a minor character.
Conclusion
I found it very interesting to see how different the results could be despite having the same framework conditions. This is very similar to design projects, where different concepts emerge despite having the same starting points, depending on the experiences of the participants. A challenge in this type of game is the unpredictability of character development; you could suddenly become the villain. The story changes constantly, making anything possible. It’s important to embrace this style of play and not take it personally if you are excluded from the game, as the progression is unpredictable.
