Gaming Wants: #RPGaDAY2020 10

Today's #RPGaDAY2020 prompt is

Want

What do I want? (GAMING when do I want it a reasonable portion of my time)

This prompt has me thinking about what I actually want out of gaming. Kind of as a companion piece to an earlier post about how my approaches to gaming have changed in the past, maybe this one is about looking to the future. So, unordered:

A weekly game. There's something about the regularity, of meeting with the same friends in the same world week after week, that builds into something marvelous. And maybe this is only with a long-running campaign, or maybe weekly one-shots would work just as well. I think it's the high frequency that matters--I don't think its something that can be captured with an occasional pick-up game, or monthly. Maybe bi-weekly. Too bad that it's impossible to find a time that works for everyone as adults.

A healthy discourse. There was rpgnet and then G+, there was the Forge and Storygames, there's always been twitter (feels like), now there's the discord and The OSR Pit, but there's still no sensible critique, no teaching, no professionally-run recognition (did you see the ENnies??). This is an indie scene, people swirling around the same ideas and disagreeing, sometimes violently, and while that has advantages with a low barrier to entry and punk/zine/DIY aesthetic it also means that it's too easy for toxicity to just fester and for poison to spread and for good ideas to get lost and forgotten. There is building-work coming out tho, in multitudinous forms (did you see Anti-Sisyphus?? and the RPG Design Zine is so cool). I dunno, building a scene is hard. Ask me about magicians some time.

Interesting stories. There's a lot of different ways to get these, and I'm not sure I have a preference. Shared narrative control is just as cool to me as emergent story from gameplay, so OSR ideas can overlap with weird GMless improv exercises and both with everything else like bennie systems to Fate-ian aspect-calling. And what about baking the story into the system through genre-specific actions like PbtA playbooks or mechanics like Dread or even hard-coding characters and plot like Lady Blackbird? There's more than one way to bind a book.

Players who want to try new things. I think conditions have to be right for this, and they all involve the above three things. People who meet regularly, built trust together, and maybe want variety. Players need to feel they're not trying something too esoteric or toxic or otherwise off-putting, and maybe have a vague familiarity with alternate systems. And the game needs to be worth playing, by the resulting stories being fun/memorable/engaging.

What do you want?

Mechanics Should Get Out of the Way: #RPGaDAY2020 2 - Change

Today's #RPGaDAY2020 prompt is

Change

A lot of my interests and involvement in the hobby have changed over the years. Or have they?

When I first started playing regularly, it was D&D 3.0. The longest campaigns I played in were 3.5, and I ran my urban fantasy homebrew The City for years in d20 modern. The sheer amount of options for characters were staggering. Skills, feats, prestige classes, a truly mindboggling amount of OGL sourcebooks--it was corpulent. Oh my god, that one Mutants and Masterminds game I ran... I assumed this was just how it worked. I -hated- prepping for the d20 modern campaign. Making balanced encounters around CR calculations, trying to create encounters specifically to challenge each PC ability, creating set-pieces and plots; when all I realy wanted to do (and kind of ended up doing anyway at the table) was just have an idea of how things might go and make up most of it as I needed it.

I played other games now and then, but it wasn't until I stumbled onto Spirit of the Century that I realized games didn't necessarily need to be so fiddly. Reading up on Fate really created a shift in perspective--not so much the shared narrative control, but that instead of making a shit-ton of hyperspecific classes and skill lists and character options, you could just... be the thing you wanted to be. The mechanics were there to -support- your idea, rather than having to implement some shadow of your idea through the mechanics.

Now of course this didn't always work in practice, and Fate still suffered some skill bloat (ever tried navigating the list from Diaspora?), but the absolute delight of Fate Accelerated Edition pretty much solved those issues and I wish I could play it more.

When I was living in England, the long-term campaign was just not an option. But there I found a community of designers who were always playtesting and trying out weird small indie games, and it was like I had walked through the doors of perception. Exposure to completely off-the-wall mechanics, one-page RPGs that didn't take themselves seriously, rules-light things that provided scaffolding for specific genres, games that generated histories and maps, the concept of ludonarrative dissonance, the crazy worlds of nordic larp, immersive theatre, and real-world games...

It was in this space, somewhere, that I also stumbled into OSR games. I knew nothing of the scene or people involved in it and mostly thought it was retroclones rather than a style of design and play. But some of the ideas I found, those that melded with other things I was learning from indie games, of stripping out and simplifying mechanics so that they get out of the way and just _letting players be who they want to be: oh that locked a change into the way I wanted to run games. I think it might have specifically been crystalized in an idea I saw in Kevin Crawford's Scarlet Heroes: characters get a background, and up to 3 points in it. They get to add those points as a bonus to any check they make that could reasonably be related to that background. It's so simple and transparent and doesn't involve like 12 different subsystems and I was like "why can't the whole thing be like this".

I've tended to like classless, rules-lite play ever since, with favoured systems being FAE, Maze Rats, and Knave. Ooo, I think running something in Risus would be good fun precisely for these reasons.

It's been interesting to see how the changes have been in knowledge and exposure rather than taste and attitudes. I kind of always knew what I wanted in rpgs, even if I couldn't express it, and managed to discover games that did those things. I'm kind of wondering now if I can codify some of those tastes in design decisions for Crook, or if they can just be things that hang out in my mind and I can keep finding ways of interacting with them via different games and systems.

What about you? How have your tastes and experiences in rpgs changed?

Restart: #RPGaDAY2020 1 - Beginning

Another year, another #RPGaDAY!

This year the daily blogging prompts take the form of words on a map:

Today's prompt is:

BEGINNING

There are more beginnings than ends.

Part of this is because I start a lot of projects and then never finish them (because other things capture my interest, or I run out of time, or I just don't want to do it anymore), but also I think in general the space of potential is much larger than the space of actual outcomes.

In this hobby, we think about how things start a lot. You all meet in a tavern. Setting expectations and rolling characters in session zero. Coming up with good adventure hooks. Looking into the shadowy dungeon entrance, lantern held high.

I wanted to get a sense of how I've been thinking about beginnings. Luckily I had the good sense to make "beginnings" a tag on this blog, so I'll review some of the things that come up on in posts I've tagged "beginnings".

The first post on this blog, obviously. Interestingly while I've mostly kept to intentions a b and d, I'd forgotten about c: "comment on and synthesize the work of other roleplaying bloggers". I have a bunch of text documents in my "Gaming" folder where I put summaries of stuff I find on blogs that all seems to fit together; for example a whole bunch of different guides on creating adventures. I think I convinced myself that nobody wanted to see stuff that was already elsewhere, but maybe that's not true? Especially if I grind it up into a paste and spread the result out.

There are a bunch of #RPGaDAY2016 posts that are tagged too. Things about getting the first session started off right, first experiences roleplaying, etc. I still love the story of how I just walked in and sat down to watch some people playing in the university dorm common room like some kind of creep and now they're awesome friends and I still play with them every week 12 years later.

There are posts about starting off game design projects, like the weird graveyard text adventure thing I started making for nagademon, and more recently my attempts to make a thiefy duet game in Crook and the Gygax 75 challenge I'm doing at this very moment.

The most-viewed post on this blog is tagged "beginnings": it's the list of Reasons to Do Gamethings which provides an occasionally-updated calendar of game jams, blogging prompts, design competitions and challenges. A whole bunch of potential beginnings!

There's also a post about the *DREAM Principles, which I think I saw as a new beginning for the OSR scene (LOLSOB especially now as I write this with loads of people leaving the OSR discord over TERF shit and opaque moderation). I actually have a draft post where I was going to look at another list of principles (the Dungeonpunk Manifesto from Sword and Backpack), and I think it would be interesting to do a series of posts about these lists of principles cause there's loads of them out there (like the Possum Laws of Gaming and the Principia Apocrypha and even the Dungeonpunk Counter-Manifesto which responded to Sword and Backpack's manifesto cause it wasn't punk enough!)

That's it for this review of previous beginnings. And whaddya know, it generated a few more beginnings. Let's see if they lead to any ends.

Content Warning

This month I am creating a game for NaGaDeMon 2016. You can follow along from the beginning.

I have been feeling dark since the election results, and the subsequent consequences.

Perhaps that's why I've had some heavy thoughts about the climactic choice in the graveyard game, and the context in which the choice is made.

The protagonist feels trapped. They are doing something awful, something they don't want to do, only because they believe they are the only one who can do it and if they don't: not only will it not get done, but there will be terrible consequences. Not only that, they have realized that their strategy of digging up corpses will ultimately fail, and the only way to move forward is to kill a living person for their blood.

In this context, the PC is confronted by the Investigator, who wants to stop the PC. The PC has an impossible choice. They could complete the ritual by killing the investigator, who was been dogging their every step and caused the corpse strategy to fail. Or they could complete the ritual by killing themselves, a surprise realization in the moment that suicide would end both the ritual and all the horror and guilt they have to experience. Or finally, they could decide to give up, that the ritual is too much to deal with and that it is better to turn themselves in and allow the consequences.

I hope that I will be able to write well enough to give that moment the appropriate weight and care. I also think it would be unethical to blindside players with this, so I need to build up to it and perhaps also include a content warning on the front page. Possibly I will ultimately decide that I can't do this justice and will try a different choice.

Dice and Things

I'm catching up on #RPGaDay2016. Today's prompts are: Aug 1-real dice, digital dice, or diceless system? and Aug 8-hardcover, softcover, or digital books?

I love the feel of well-made, wonderful physical objects. I must have weighty dice, or ones with interesting designs, and I'm a sucker for beautiful hardcovers (Maze of the Blue Medusa anyone?). Also, having a book at the table with bookmarks in is very handy as a reference.

That said, having dice and reference sheets on my phone is great, especially for pick-up games while out and about. But if I have an in-person game prepared in advance, nothing beats the semi-organized clutter of dice and papers and books at the game table.

I might change my mind once more PDFs have really good bookmarking and linking systems. It's easier to print out sheets and keep them in a file folder than to flip through a pdf and hope to get the right page with ctrl+f.

Most of the references I print out are random tables. I love randomizers of all kinds--dice, cards (playing, tarot, other oracle...), coins, tops, spinners. I like their unpredictability, I like giving them meaning and structure. I've played diceless systems before (and I don't mean like Minds Eye Theatre--I've LARPed Vampire and rock-paper-scissors is a great randomizer), online in free-form roleplaying chatrooms and PbP forums. They did not go anywhere. I think a randomizer is the quickest way to settle conflict resolution in a game, and descriptive, diceless systems I've seen have never satisfied. If someone could run a game of Amber or, like, The Window or something, that really showed me how if works that would be great. But til then, give me my tables and dice!

Myth Made Real

Today's #RPGaDay2016 prompt is: if you could host a game anywhere on earth, where would that be?

At a comfortable pub with large tables and a nice ambience, exactly equidistant between all of my players' homes. The beer would be good, the staff and clientele wouldn't mind lengthy gaming sessions, and it would be easy to get to.

Luckily, such a place already exists. (I just need to move back to Vancouver)

A Poor Education?

Today's #RPGaDay2016 prompt is: what film/novel would you be most surprised a friend had not seen/read?

The only possible answer is Star Wars, because at this point I would wonder how they managed to avoid it. It's freakin' everywhere! It takes a special kind of bloody-mindedness to avoid a popular, long-running franchise that also has the marketing juggernaut of Disney behind it.

While I would be surprised, I wouldn't necessarily care all that much or be offended or anything like that. I mean, you do you. However, when people are inexplicably proud of avoiding something just because it's popular--that's annoying. Like all those memes on facebook that go "I haven't seen a single episode of Game of Thrones. HATERS GONNA HATE" or "Pokemon Go? I am an adult with a job and life!" Ok good for you I guess. Well done on avoiding a cultural touchstone? It's one thing to just not have got round to it or have no interest at all, but actively avoiding and then bragging is different.

By the way, here's some things that -I- haven't seen that might surprise my friends:

Jaws
Rocky 
Pulp Fiction
Reservoir Dogs
Fargo
Fight Club
anything by H.P. Lovecraft
the Exorcist
Stephen King's fiction
the Shining
Neil Gaiman's fiction
the Lord of the Rings books
the Earthsea trilogy
the Game of Thrones books
Frankenstein
Isaac Asimov's fiction
Dune
Ender's Game
Alien
either of the good Terminators
2001: A Space Oddysey (neither the film nor the book)
and I tried Neuromancer but stopped because I didn't like it.

I used to feel ashamed of not having experienced these things (thanks mostly to assholes that post memes like the ones I mention above). But really, who cares? I know the plot and tropes and cool scenes from many of them, thanks to the roiling vortex of pop culture knowledge and shared references. Hell, I even -own- a lot of these and just haven't got round to them. There's SO MUCH good stuff out there that, actually, I'd be surprised if someone HAD seen every piece of culture available. There's always more to discover!

Ancient Soviet Ruins

Today's #RPGaDay2016 prompt is: most unusual circumstance or location you've played in.

Boy, I have played in a wide variety of very boring places. The university dorm common room, my dining room, my friends' dining rooms, and my living room (which also includes playing online).

Literally the only time I have not played in one of those situations was around this time last year. There was an extended family gathering in Poland to celebrate my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. We all went to a "health resort", which turned out to actually be a former soviet holiday camp. The architecture and food quality had not changed since the 60s. It was infested with wasps. We had to buy toilet paper and soap from the front desk. The woods outside contained an exercise trail that weaved through impressive old bunker-looking things:

My partner improvised a game for me in the lobby. Pretending to explore ancient Mayan ruins was a nice respite from this bizarre place. Though, it was on a pretty lake and the sun looked good reflected on the water. I should set a game there.

I Have a Gift

Today's #RPGaDay2016 prompt is: what game are you most likely to give as a gift?

I don't think I've ever given a roleplaying game as a gift (unless board/card games with a strong narrative count, like the FFG LotR LCG). I've known enough gamers that it's not like I don't have anyone to whom I could gift an RPG. Perhaps taste in games is something so individual that it's even harder than usual to determine what gift to give. After all, you don't want to give someone a gift they don't want--or that they already have. If a friend is interested enough in roleplaying that giving them a sourcebook or a core rulebook would be sensible, they might already have it somewhere--or they specifically don't have it because they're not into it. It amplifies the natural difficulty with gift-giving (which I obviously also overthink).

However, this changes when there's no money involved. If I don't have to buy the game, the risk of somehow "getting it wrong" is diminished. There's so many cool games and supplements available for free, and it's fun to share them. I find myself evangelizing certain systems because of cool setting details or an interesting mechanic, and I'll send people a copy of the PDF or a link to the SRD. I don't know if that counts as a gift, but it feels like the spirit is the same: hey, I think you'd like this!

As specificity is the soul of narrative: the games I send to people most often are probably Fate (usually to show people how cool the Phase Trio is, or to pick out some interesting advice from the System Toolkit) and Lasers & Feelings (because it's just so small and silly and perfect). Hey--you should try them out!

A Critical Hit

Today's #RPGaDay2016 prompt is: most challenging but rewarding system you've learned.

By far the most complex system I've played regularly is D&D 3-3.5. The amount of feats, prestige classes, and subsystems for things like grappling just sent my head spinning. And since it was my first proper experience with roleplaying, I tried to learn it all so I could "play it right".

While I no longer think it's a system I'd want to run again (and Pathfinder doesn't really appeal either), I'm -glad- that there was so much complexity. It gave something interesting to engage in, and the promise of the same sort of strategic depth that Magic: the Gathering had. I'm not sure I would have stayed interested in roleplaying if not for that perceived depth. You can probably tell by my hedging language that I no longer believe this. I think the rules were bloated and the depth illusory, especially once you got into the OGL d20 third-party supplements. The enormous success of 3rd ed and the OGL spawned an incredible ecosystem of games.

Once I had a grasp of d20, there was this whole wide world of other settings and games built on it, and through them I discovered the enormous variety in tabletop gaming. The separation of system and setting really intrigued me, and I think some of the design decisions I like in games is related to that, as is an enduring interest in generic game systems. Expanding beyond D&D was possible because I could try running d20 Modern and Mutants and Masterminds--a trail of breadcrumbs leading to different types of games.

I also don't think I would be as interested in story games and rules-lite systems if I wasn't responding to the crunchiness of 3.5 (and later, 4e). I wouldn't have as broad an interest in roleplaying games either. And I might not even have kept roleplaying in the first place! So thanks, 3rd ed, for being a useful stepping stone.

The Weirding

Today's #RPGaDay2016 prompt is: Your dream team of people you used to game with.

I had a group of friends I made during university, and we would game together nearly every week for five years. When I moved to England for grad school, the amount of gaming significantly dropped--I'm lucky if I can play a one-shot once every four months. I miss just seeing my friends weekly, let alone gaming with them.

In the first week of university, I knew nobody. My experience with gaming was mostly PC adventure games and Magic: the Gathering, with a few gamebooks and an AD&D introductory box set I played with my little brother maybe twice. In the common room of my dormitory, I saw some people sitting around with some books, dice, and a DM screen. I came in and sat down and just watched for a bit, like a weirdo. I asked if I could join in, and they said yes. If they thought I was weird for just watching them play, it didn't show. Turns out, they were all weird too. I had found my people.

Over the next few years about half of the gaming group would become my roommates, in one apartment or another. I'd stay up til 4 am with them, individually, talking bullshit and games and life. We'd GM campaigns for everyone in each other's apartments. I'd meet my romantic partner in one of these campaigns.

I can't even imagine how much of my life has been shaped by sitting down in the common room because I spotted some dice and a DM screen. I love each and every single person I've gamed with because of that, and I'd love to play with all of them again.