#151: What Is A Cinematic Game?
here we go again: grasping meaning from the maw of chaos
I. Dear Reader,
So let’s talk about the term “cinematic” when it comes to roleplaying games. It’s a word that gets thrown around a lot and I’m not sure I’ve read someone actually explaining what they mean by that. So I’m going to try and explain what I think the term cinematic should mean when it comes to TTRPGs.
Now this isn’t something I normally do. Normally, I am a kind of descriptivist - I just try to describe what other people mean when they use a word. But in this situation, I’m going to be more of a prescriptivist and propose what I think this word should mean.
The first thing to note is that the meaning cannot actually be too specific. Cinema isn’t one thing. So when we say “cinematic”, we usually mean a specific type of cinema - which you might have to deduce from context. Someone can describe their game as cinematic and mean “Hollywood action movies in the 2000s” and someone else could describe their game as cinematic and mean “like Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings”.
Okay, to me, when I describe a game as cinematic, I mean that:
the shared imaginary space (the thing we are all imagining in our heads) looks and operates like a movie of appropriate genre
the speed of the game can be compared to the speed of those same events in movies
So by point one, I mean that cinematic games are ones that lean on the look and feel of movies as you play them. Players might frame and imagine the game as a movie - describing camera angles and so on. (“The camera cuts away to reveal…”) They might also expect the game to feel like a movie in terms of logic. Like in a cinematic action game, we might expect action movie logic, i.e., the hero can only get flesh wounds from no-name bad guys. Or hey, maybe, in this game, you can leap a car off a building into another building. Or smash a helicopter with a car. Or take a car into space?!
And by point two, I mean that cinematic games are also talking about how fast they play. A game that promises cinematic fights should be judged by how long those fights take, compared to fights in movies. In that sense, we could compare D&D 5e to the recent D&D: Honour among Thieves movie and say that the game doesn’t have particularly cinematic combat because of the obvious difference in time taken. If you’re making a martial arts game inspired by the movies of Bruce Lee, well, most Bruce Lee fight scenes are around the 5 minute mark. SoI think if a game says it’s cinematic in that sense, it better at least try to get close to that number!
Like all definitions, I expect this can be torn to pieces. So let me know what you think! Have games like Feng Shui got a better definition that I missed? Let me know!
Yours, slowly zooming into a tight close-up,
Thomas
II. Media of the Week
On the RPG Design Panelcast, a fun panel called The Many Meanings of Diceless that talks about lots of different ways a game can be diceless - some that retain randomizers or uncertainty, others that don’t.
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III. Links of the Week
News
Paizo release a final version of the ORC license
Kickstarter has more or less backed out of any serious blockchain or crypto plans.
Adventure Time is getting an official RPG in English. I believe there was an Italian or Spanish one already.
Articles and Essays
On the Deeper In The Game blog, a solid post about relationship mechanics as flags that players wave when they’re opting in. After some chatter about romance in games, this is a solid counter to some of the claims thrown about it.
Indie Game Reading Club reviews a handful of games, all connected by being wildly creative and weird. This includes far future fever dream Stillfleet, green apocalypse Wildsea, and minotaur gender explorer The Clay That Woke.
I found this post really interesting: Lowell Francis tries to break down why he chooses certain games over others. It’s trying to explicitly state criteria that for most of us is kind of vague and amorphous (“I want games with a randomizer and a GM”, etc). But it’s also something I think about a lot so I’m glad to see someone trying to articulate it.
On Githyanki Diaspora, Judd has something neat for Traveler fans. What if the hodge podge of currency systems across the galaxy could be represented through one stat, Largesse?
There’s also a blogpost of links to people running Traveler style games including the wonderful Stars without Number random sector generator called Sectors without Number. Highly recommended!
POCGamer describes his experience as a diver in a new series about aquatic RPGs
There’s a TTRPG For That has a post about games where you’re a weird bug alien
IV. Small Ads
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Explore an infinite library with your familiar, discovering places, patrons, and secrets along the way. The Librarian’s Apprentice - an all-ages solo journaling RPG - is available now on Crowdfundr.
Join a Wyld Coven in Witches of Midnight, a hopeful horror Forged in the Dark TTRPG & tarot deck! Choose from 22 magical playbooks & 9 immortal bloodlines including Medusae, Satyr & Lilitu. Unleash your inner witch!
Border Ridings is a collaborative history-building game, played by drawing evolving town maps on scraps of paper. Rules printed on a massive fold out map! Coming to Kickstarter July 1st through to July 21st.
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Old school inspired games, Warlock! and Warpstar! are on sale
Also, the Dork Tower comic series about all things nerdy is bundled up
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I like the first half of your cinematic definition - that's the one use I for myself. But the second half feels off to me.
In my mind, it's never going to be the case that a play group can move at the speed of Bruce Lee action scene. Those scenes are so fast! I think RPGs can still emulate them, maybe even taking 5 minutes of mechanics to map onto a 5 minute sequence, but the experience is going to be so radically different. The movie will move at the speed of a fist flying through the air while the game is going to move no faster than the speed of a conversation, and probably a conversation that involves remembering how the rules work.
RPGs feel so often about taking some conversation and mechanics and maybe a little randomization and smooshing it all together until we've all agreed on a piece of fiction that plays like a cinematic sequence in our collective heads. By the time I'm done with a Blades in the Dark score, I can replay the thing in my mind in a way that feels so much like a movie. But the process of getting there, including the speed, feels super different.
Then again, I'm sort of arguing that RPGs move at the speed of bullet time, a uniquely cinematic invention. :)
The other Adventure Time official RPG was Spanish, published by Nosolorol!
They did a pretty neat work with it.