Aboleth Overlords

Towards an Interaction Model

I have been chatting with several people about my last post, MDA for Tabletop Adventure Games. In particular, Sam Sorensen posted his thoughts on the framework—suffice to say, he is not a fan and does not feel the model applies to tabletop games and, in many cases, not even video games.

I appreciate the discussion I’ve had on this subject – and I’m a big fan of Sam’s and find many kindred points in his post, especially in his New Simulationism pamphlet, which purports a play perspective very close to my own and many of us flag-waving in the FKR (although I am a fan of dropping pretty much all terminology that got associated with the Forge, of course “Simulationism” predates that place, so it is very much ingrained into the hobby and I need to get over myself about that).

Speaking of FKR, a big reason I’ve been gung-ho about that gaming culture and why I even posted about MDA was that I am specifically interested in discussing how interactions elicit different emotional responses among people. The interaction of coordinating play tests in video games that held MDA (at least lightly) reminded me of how I view referees and players iterating over the techniques they use at the table.

This is not meant to be dismissive, but in many of these conversations, I almost feel like we sometimes get stuck in the whole “self-reference” Russel Paradox of set theory. The details of this paradox aren’t super important to this discussion, but suffice it to say that it is easily circumvented through axiomizing the details. If we have a problem of “who shaves the barber!?” given the condition that “the barber shaves all men who don’t shave themselves,” – create a new theory where you add an exception to this, and see if anything breaks down.

Coincidentally, when working in research and development for video games, I often dove into this kind of discussions quite a lot. I would cite something for potential reference, usually an experimental game or toy, and the first response I would receive would be, ” But is it a game?” To which I’d shrug and say, ” Whether it is or not, by whatever definition you have, I still wanna look at it for potential influence.” Determining what is a game can be enlightening, fun, whatever – it’s just not something that currently interests me.

I honestly couldn’t care less about “defending” MDA from a strict “does everything in this paper line up with what we now know” standpoint. I think it was born out of a very specific context, and while it was doing a lot of trailblazing, I do not think every statement contained within was ironclad. I am more interested in looking at my personal experiences with the model and asking, “Can I extrapolate/adapt this to make running games more fun for me and my players?” Maybe yes, maybe no.

Defining an MDA-like

So, given what I said about definitional arguments, let me post how I see an MDA-like (or MDA– or MDA++ or pMDA or however you wanna phrase it – I care absolutely nothing if people see this as an extension/adaptation of a theory or something else) working for tabletop adventure games.

Note the emphasis on adventure games, if whether or not this is applicable to story games or solo games or lyrical games, or anything else is not my current concern. This is not to disparage these games, they’re just not in scope of what I am thinking about.

Also note that in game studies, there is generally no consensus on what things like a “game” or “rule” is, so I am not proposing these are universally definitional, rather just short hand for the following ideas when talking in this context.

So an Adventure Game is outlined by Retired Adventurer in this post.

The word Game in this model refers to an instance of play. Sometimes we’ll use “game” as shorthand to refer to the idea of, general assumed rules and procedures, and culture of a particular adventure game title (eg. the “game” of Dungeons & Dragons), but really all that matters is what is living at the table (and to a lesser degree, how it is discussed/remembered in retrospect).

To me, every player and referee in an adventure game is a Designer. I don’t think there’s any special privilege to anyone who has produced a rulestext. Every game being a social interaction obviously changes dependent on who is involved – each game is designed by the participants, even if this “design” is just how they make rulings out of pre-existing rules, or if they’re coming up with their own defined rules (or many more cases).

Mechanics are all the rules, procedures, ludemes, fictional facts, etc. as they exist – on paper, or in peoples’ heads, or anywhere else. I know Sam wanted to distinguish mechanics as mechanisms as “instrument of play,” but I think we all kind of know that is not how roleplayers refer to mechanics, and honestly fit with the definition as I learned it in my game design courses (as well as many books on the subject). Things like “Roll a d20 and add your to-hit bonus, compare to your opponent’s armour class, and if you meet or succeed you hit” is an example of this. Also “falling into lava kills you,” as well as “the referee describes the world – ask questions to clarify then declare intent.” Basically its the idea of how anything gets resolved in game.

Dynamics are the actual reified moments of play where humans interact with each other and the Mechanics. So “rolling to hit” as outlined above is not a Dynamic, but when Joanna says what she’s doing, the referee asks her to roll to hit, and then she does is a Dynamic.

The way we perceive these Dynamics produce emotional responses, which are fine to call Aesthetics. I copied the original eight kinds of fun in my previous post – I certainly don’t think they are exhaustive, and I think when applied to tabletop there’s quite a few interesting bits of overlap and places we split some “types” of fun, and call out particularly interesting, recurrent unions between multiple types.

Note that Mechanics and Dynamics are definitely infinite, and they are mutable, within the same Game, sometimes even moment to moment. In one instance you may decide to use a traditional D&D to-hit roll in combat. In the following instance you may decide that in the current world context, or even social context (eg. its getting late let’s wrap this up we can imagine how its going to go) and elide this roll or use an entirely different mechanic. Sometimes you use rules to “zoom in” and de-abstract procedures, other times you “zoom out” and do the reverse.

I don’t think this breaks the model by any regard – each of these instances are themselves dynamics, and they’ll produce various aesthetics among the players. How, and more importantly – why they do is worth looking at. Of course dynamics and aesthetics are fractal – one emotional response accumulates and attenuates a large emotional response of the session which does for the campaign (if playing in one) which then expands out to multiple campaigns with a play group, etc. I think these are all worth investigating among a group, as they continue to drive towards experiences they want to share together.

So the above may be small fry, and for anyone looking for deeper more philosophical theory, this will either be disappointing I have spent so many words on, or seem like nothing at all. Which is fine, I’m not trying to make any real philosophical statements or not.

Why I bring up MDA is because I want to start talking about specific interactions at the table and the responses they bring up. The “Dynamics” and the “Aesthetics” terms are suitable language to use as short-hand here.

Anyway, this was a messy, long post, but I thank anyone who read through it. Let me know what you think, especially if it includes how we can better talk about the actual, in-play interactions.

MDA for Tabletop Adventure Games

I’ve been thinking more about the MDA Framework and how it can apply to tabletop adventure games. This is a framework related to video game design, and while it has received some criticisms and unanswered questions, it has pretty much stood the test of time in that field.

I’ll do my best to briefly summarize the framework, but it is a pretty easy paper to read, and I’d highly recommend it.

The framework posits that games are artifacts¹, created by the designer, and consumed by the player. Games get broken down into kind of three components, or lenses – Rules, Systems, and “Fun.” Note the quotes on that last term, as the framework distinguishes that there are different kinds of fun for different kinds of people, so the term is only used loosely.

It’s also worth noting that Rules and Systems are distinct here. Often in tabletop games, we use the two interchangeably, or often indicating that a System is the sum of its rules, but “System” in MDA is much closer to the Baker-Care Principle: it’s how things are “resolved”, the kind of emergence of play.

Each of these three lenses has a counterpart that is more formally described by the framework – for Rules it is “Mechanics.” This is very close to the terms we use in tabletop games. These would be the mechanisms and (many) procedures as outlined in the rules texts – rolling a d20 and adding a modifier to see if AC is breached to score a hit is an example of a Mechanic.

For Systems, the corollary is “Dynamics.” Dynamics are the emergent gameplay features that arise out of the players’ interactions with mechanics. This includes such things as pacing, notions of challenge, degrees of autonomy and agency, etc. An example of this would be how the players decide to interact with D&D’s various “clocks” in the dungeon crawling procedures – the wandering monsters, choices related to resources, deciding if making a loud noise to bash through a door is worth the time saved by picking the locks or going around, etc.

And last, and most certainly not least, the equivalent to “Fun” in the model is “Aesthetics.” The Aesthetic lens pulls the conversation away from more ambiguous declarations of “gameplay” and, coincidentally, “fun,” and more so onto components found within a game that may be of interest to the table. These are the desired emotional responses to the game, as well as the priorities sought out by players (consciously or unconsciously).

In the paper, there are eight kinds of Aesthetics outlined, although they mention that this is not intended to be exhaustive. These types include:

Sensation: the notion of sense-pleasure. This ranges from responses to the quality of the art around a game, the tone of the writing, the feel of rolling specific dice, the look of a character sheet, and quite a bit more. I also think this heavily revolves around some of the place-and-space related to gaming, how cozy a table may be, the association of snacks and drinks with a game, and more.
Fantasy: this is not just “fantasy” as a genre, but rather the imagining of another world, another life. This is the appeal of “What would it be like to be in Star Wars,” or diving deep into picturing what it would be like to be your favorite fictional character (or their serials-removed equivalent).
Narrative: this is closer to what we would call “story,” a forever contentious term in this area of the hobby. In video games, this would be judging the plot of the game as a compelling (to you) tale or not. In our hobby, this would be more the tales one tells of the game – the transcript of events, and the high and low moments your table remembers. This could also cover notions of “plot” in terms of railroaded or participationist games, but I’m not an expert on that subject.
Challenge: our classic “mastery” aesthetic – the notion of rising to and overcoming obstacles (or not). Of course, challenge is always a little wiggly in tabletop games because there are probably as many “types” of challenge as there are referees or players (for example, combat-as-war and combat-as-sport are two classic examples of different expectations around challenge), but this is mostly the joy of being presented with something to overcome, and using one’s abilities to do so.
Fellowship: the joy in games as a social activity. Seeing your friends, making people smile (or gasp, or frown, or whatever your goal may be), showing acknowledgment to each others’ ideas and creations, fellowship is in many ways one of the defining aesthetics of tabletop roleplaying games.
Discovery: finding out new things, going to uncharted locations, unearthing the DEEP LORE, as well as being there for extremely novel outcomes of such things as random generation and emergent procedures. Like Challenge, Discovery has many forms, particularly in our sub-niche of adventure games.
Expression: game as a means of communicating one’s self. Creating characters to highlight some aspect of your personality, aligning oneself with games and scenes that exhibit personal qualities akin to your own. Choosing a style of play that aligns with one’s interest and expressing that in-game to the other people around the table, either mechanically or descriptively.
Submission: the fun of submitting to the notion of “the game” as a part of one’s life. The idea of setting aside time for “game night,” the lifestyle stuff, cons, the juggling of other aspects to be a tabletop adventure gamer and show up for your game.

These Aesthetics are usually described as being associated with, or served by, specific games, but with many tabletop adventure games, so much is left to the table, that many games can be melded to fit their tables’ aesthetic interests.

So the interaction of Mechanics with player “input” creates the Dynamics, and the Dynamics serve to create or reinforce the Aesthetics. Old-school, low-level D&D games often get cited as deadly(ish) games of resource handling with a tension similar to roguelikes. So these Aesthetics come directly out of the limitations on choices players make and the often dire repercussions that occur when a player opts to move much slower to carry a bunch of treasure or lose the AC bonus from a shield to ensure that they are the one holding the torch.

Now, how does this framework apply to tabletop adventure games? Well, I think the overall model fits very well. Some of the Aesthetics are framed in terms of video games, but I think I did a decent job of explaining how they fit adventure gaming. Similarly, in video games, we describe the Designer as “creating” the game in MDA order, whereas players experience the game in ADM order. I think this is largely true of tabletop games – you’ll often pitch a game by saying “You’re all the holders to secret pieces of information that could free a world ruled over by a dark lord who has suppressed that learning, and you can do magic!” But it is also not uncommon for gamers to eventually seek out games from a more Mechanical or Dynamic perspective. Not that I think this invalidates the theory, it is just something to think about.

Are these eight kinds of fun sufficient to describe most tabletop games? I think I already noted that I see some tension in a few of the classes – for example, the Fantasy of imagining crop rotation in Harn is a different kind of Fantasy when picturing awesome powers with whatever 5e subclass you are drawn to. There’s kind of that “immersion” vs. “world authenticity” vs. “OC” aspect to that, which has distinct parallels with the Expression aesthetic. Expression varies in terms of types of immersion, stances, character voicing and description methods, etc. In Narrative, we have the classic “railroad” (or “story before”) vs. the story now/after crowd.

We may have different aesthetics with tabletop adventure games, or perhaps my perspective is just one of a “splitter” rather than a “grouper.”

Finally, what use is all of this? Well, I think it’s useful to always think about your own (and your tables’) preferences, and realize that while the Dynamics may not necessarily force any one specific set of Aesthetics, they may do something along the lines of broadcasting likely subjects.

I think the framework is useful for thinking of kinds of fun as springing out of the interactions with the Dynamics and how they are perceived, rather than assuming that given X rule one will get Y result (having a to-hit and hp system does not, on its own, produce Challenge fun).

This all mostly gels with how I think about tabletop refereeing (because I think refereeing and playing is game design, as much as writing a rules text). Rather than thinking of what rules to add, I often think about what interactions can get us to where we want to go. It’s only when we decide that an interaction is procedural enough, needs to be abstracted, etc. does it need to become a “rule.”

Thank you for reading. That’s just something that’s been on my mind lately. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Note that I don’t personally agree with this, particularly for RPGs – rules texts are artifacts, and games to me are reified instances of play, living only at the table, created by everyone involved. I do not think this breaks the intention behind this model which may be a later blogpost. ↩︎

Ye Olde Fantasy: Family Matters

Here is a series of tables to generate an immediate family for your player character in a pseudo-medieval fantasy setting. This assumes you are using Ye Olde Fantasy: Social Status, but if not, replace any social modifier roll with a character’s Charisma modifier or any equivalent the table deems appropriate.

Parentage

Roll a d20 on the following table(s) to determine the character’s parentage status.

d20	Parentage
1-10	Both parents raised the character.
11-14	One parent is missing. Roll on the Cause of Absence table. Also, roll on the Single Parent table.
15-17	One parent is dead. Roll on the Cause of Death table. Also, roll on the Single Parents table.
18-19	Both parents are dead. Roll on the Cause of Death table, optionally twice. Also, roll on the No Parents table.
20	Roll on the Unusual Circumstance table.

Cause of Death

Roll on this when you need to determine a cause of death for a family member.

d20	Cause of Death
1	Heart attack or other heart disease
2	Common illness, such as the flu
3	Infection
4	Work-related accident
5	Battle-related wounds (either by participating in combat, or being mugged)
6	Starvation
7	Weather
8	Plague or uncommon disease
9	Drowning
10	Poison, such as accidental ingestion or contact
11	Fire
12	Fall from heights
13	Domestic accident or manslaughter
14	Childbirth (reroll if not appropriate)
15	Execution
16	Animal-related, domesticated, or wild
17	Alcohol poisoning
18	Suicide
19	Murder, most likely by a rival
20	Roll on the Unusual Cause of Death Table

d20	Unusual Cause of Death
1	Blasted by magic
2	Teleported to the underworld
3	Cursed by a witch or warlock
4	Magical or rare beast attack
5	Sacrificed to a Chaos cult
6	Fell into a magical rift
7	Transformed into a frog, eaten by a dog
8	Killed by spirits
9	Mistook a Mimic for an ordinary item
10	Turned to stone, shattered
11	Died from Potion Overdose
12	Fell into the sky
13	Murdered by humanoid monsters
14	Contracted lycanthropy, executed by monster hunters
15	Suffered magical backlash from a nearby Wizard’s failed spell
16	Absorbed by a magical artifact, such as a mirror or soul-eating sword
17	Drained by a vampire
18	Spontaneously combusted
19	Aged in reverse until ceasing to exist
20	Dropped dead for no apparent reason

Cause of Absence

Roll on the following table to learn why a character’s family member was absent.

d12	Cause of Absence
1	Unknown, just went missing
2	Affair related departure
3	Imprisoned
4	Seeking a cure for a disease
5	On a long religious pilgrimage
6	Exploring unknown lands
7	Disappeared during a natural disaster, such as a flood
8	Seeking a cure to a disease
9	Exiled for political reasons
10	Banished for religious reasons
11	Joined a religious order
12	Roll on the Unusual Absence Table

d12	Unusual Cause of Absence
1	Lost in the Realm of Fairies
2	Kidnapped by humanoid monsters
3	Enthralled by a vampire
4	Abducted by a flying monster, such as a dragon or griffin
5	Joined a Chaos cult
6	Sucked into the amulet of a warlock or witch
7	Fell into an enchanted, unending slumber
8	Caught in a time loop, continually relives the same period over and over but unable to break out of it
9	Attained some form of religious enlightenment, taken fully formed into the heavens
10	Spirit separated from the body, either through magic or permanent astral projection
11	Turned to stone
12	Transformed into a toad

Single Parent

Roll on the following table to determine if your parent remarried:

d20 + SOC	Parent Remarriage
1-12	Parent did not remarry
13-20	Parent remarried

If the parent remarried, treat the character’s background as if both parents had raised them.

If they did not remarry, roll on the following Single Parent table:

d20	Single Parent SOC <= 0	SOC = +1	SOC = +2	SOC = +3
1-5	Raised by parent	Raised by parent	Raised by parent	Raised by parent
6-8	Fostered by a family member or neighbor	Fostered by another family member	Fostered by another family member	Raised by parent
9-11	Adopted by another peasant family	Adopted by another family	Fostered by a guild member	Fostered by another notable family
12-14	Adopted by a religious institute, such as a monastery	Fostered by a guild member	Fostered in a religious institution	Fostered by a high-ranking clergy member
15-17	Adopted by a social institute, such as an orphanage	Fostered by a village or town official	Fostered by an academic or notable village/town official	Fostered by an important town official or notable academic
18-20	Fended for self as an abandoned urchin	Fostered by a religious institute, such as a monastery	Fostered as a page or squire with a bachelor knight	Fostered as a page or squire with an honorable knight

Note that fostered children are highly likely to know their birth parents, while adopted children are unlikely to.

No Living Parents

Roll on the following No Parents table to determine the status of your character’s upbringing:

d20	No Parents SOC <= 0	SOC = +1	SOC = +2	SOC = +3
1-5	Adopted by another family	Adopted by another family	Adopted by another family	Adopted by another family
6-8	Adopted by an orphanage	Adopted by a guild member	Adopted by an important guild member	Adopted by another family
9-11	Adopted by a monastery	Adopted by an honorable knight	Adopted by a notable monastery	Adopted by a prestigious religious institute
12-14	Adopted by a traveling group, such as roaming actors	Adopted by a merchant	Adopted by an academic	Adopted by an important scholar
15-17	Communally raised in a community	Adopted by a village or town official	Adopted by a notable village or town official	Adopted by a low-ranking member of the gentry
18-20	Fended for self as an abandoned urchin	Adopted by a low ranking member of the gentry	Adopted by a low-ranking member of the gentry	Adopted by an important town official

Unusual Circumstances

Roll on the following table to determine your character’s particularly notable upbringing. Many of these get pretty fantastical, so feel free to restrict it to just the first six or so if you are playing a more grounded campaign or don’t want the PCs starting with more fantastical upbringings.

d20	Unusual Upbringing
1	Bastard of a higher-ranking noble
2	Bastard of a notable religious figure
3	Adopted by the community’s wise person
4	Raised in a religious cult’s commune
5	Raised by wild animals
6	Adopted by a wandering adventurer
7	Adopted by a wizard
8	Magically aged to an adult
9	Wandered into a haunted location, raised by ghosts or spirits
10	Immaculately conceived
11	Was a spirit or fae-being who was condemned to live as a mortal
12	Descendent of divine or spiritual lineage
13	Sired by a human and a demon
14	Transported from another reality, likely ours
15	Crawled out of a shallow grave with no memory
16	Born with an ominous birthmark, such as a religious symbol or a daemon’s sigil
17	Born under an astrological anomaly.
18	Willed into being out of someone’s dream
19	Was a monster, polymorphed into mortal form
20	Sprung out of a natural disaster, such as a fire, floor, or comet strike.

For the above, you may have to reroll on the Parentage table to determine conditions beyond the unusual circumstances or ask your Referee to work with you on the details.

Siblings

Roll d6 + SOC modifier to determine the number of siblings the player character may have lived with. To determine the character’s sibling rank, roll a die equal to or greater than the number of siblings plus one, rerolling any results greater than the total number of children.

The character has a SOC modifier of +0, so they roll a d6 and get 4. Since the total number of children is 5, the player rolls a d6 to determine where they fall in the birth order, rerolling if they get a 6.

To determine how many siblings survived until the current game, roll a d20 per sibling on the following table, adding in SOC modifier unless a natural 1 is rolled.

d20	Sibling life status
1-4	Dies in childbirth
5-6	Dies within three years of being born.
7-8	Dies within the second year after birth.
9-10	Dies within three years of being birth.
11+	Survives, hurrah!

Relationships

You will likely want to establish relationships with your parents and siblings. Using your game’s notion of Reaction Rolls works fantastic for this. In the future, I will post my rip-off take on Pendragon and BRP’s Personality Traits for running Crusader Kings-esque reactions, but in the meantime, 2d6 + CHA mod, higher is more favorable works.

GaryCon 16 – Playing Blackmoor

I was at GaryCon a few weeks ago and had an absolute blast. I got to reconvene with friends, play a decent amount of games, and chat will all sorts of people. GaryCon has consistently been one of my favorite conventions to go to.

Probably the highlight of the convention was getting to participate in a “seminar” with Bob Meyer, an old Twin Cities gamer, and the man who had inherited Blackmoor from Dave Arneson, as well as play in a game with him and a co-GM of his.

I put seminar in quotes because it was really a discussion, several people sat at a table and Bob told us stories about how gaming got to where it is today. He encouraged people to ask questions and kept the whole ordeal very warm and casual. Ben Riggs of Slaying the Dragon was there recording the seminar, and I was certainly happy because I wasn’t the only one asking “deep lore” sort of questions of Bob.

I think the biggest concept Bob conveyed was that nothing in the early days of roleplaying was birthed entirely full-formed in any one place, nor can one draw a historical precedent to any singular activity, rather that everything tends to be the sum of many influences, failed attempts, random ideas, and mechanics taken from other games.

I asked him about the Troll game he participated in – the short version of this is that Dave Arneson wanted to run Blackmoor for Bob, and Dave told Bob that he would be a “hero.” Bob then ran into a troll under a bridge, charged the troll, and after a few failed attempts to dispatch the monster, the troll clubbed Bob’s character, killing him immediately. The mythology around this event tends to state two things – that this was run utilizing the Fantasy Supplement in Chainmail, and that Bob’s disapproval of the session (which Dave agreed with) led to the inclusion of hit points (from Don’t Give Up The Ship) into Blackmoor.

Bob did seem hesitant to crown this event as “where hit points came from” in Blackmoor, and in addition – Bob listed numerous implementations of hit and damage structures that were floating around the Twin Cities, that Dave had likely been planning on playing with. Nonetheless, it was very interesting to hear him recall these events.

Bob mentioned that a big part of his continuing to run these events, despite wanting to retire numerous times, is that he has seen more and more people adopt a “Blackmoorian” style of running games. He seemed pleased when I told him there was a whole sub-niche of nerds online who are pretty obsessed with this style, and he got a bit emotional that people would travel far and wide just to hear about his friends and their games.

In terms of the actual game, I cannot go too far into specifics, as Bob did not want any details recorded, as he felt the surprise and novelty was a part of the experience of playing in his versions of Blackmoor, so I will not say what happened in the adventure. For general setup – we had two tables, one run by Bob, and a second run by a co-GM (Bob specifically liked Game Master over Referee, as he felt Referee was “rules oriented”, and Dungeon Master because he said games were more than just dungeons). Each table contained a party, and we each had the same goals – we were essentially splitting up to cover more ground. The two parties could meet up throughout play, or even affect each other.

Bob starts by asking everyone why they, the players, are there. This led to short discussions of how everyone had heard of Blackmoor. For many it was obviously Secrets of Blackmoor, for a few of us it was First Fantasy Campaign or Adventures in Fantasy and just being into the old-school stuff. After this Bob asked us all about our characters and let us pick one unique ability – this could be magical, it could be a special item or expertise, anything really. My character could talk to spirits, and other examples at our table included a shapeshifter, as well as someone who could change the density of any object.

In terms of resolution, most of it was what you’d expect if you’ve followed any details on Bob Meyer – contested 2d6, the highest roll gets their intent. My whole Primeval 2d6 is written to basically explain how I run this style. Bob made lots of calls and had a great way of finding complications to almost any action. He had a very specific way of calling for the character’s action by pointing out when a player had put forth and intention but hadn’t clarified what they wanted to do. I found that interesting, and wondered if he had run into situations of players doing gotchas of “I said I wanted to touch the glowing skull, not that I did touch it.”

It was a very fun game, and one of those experiences that I will cherish for the rest of my life. The rest of the con was fantastic as well – I got to play in many great games. I had a very fun game of Wyvern’s Roost ran by directsun that had some of the top fantasy hijinks I’ve ever been in.

If you’re ever planning on heading to GaryCon, drop me a message and maybe we can meet up and get a game in!

Play (Fantasy) Worlds idea proposal

In a previous post, I mentioned that I felt the FKR had largely done a poor job of articulating its extremely accessible playstyle and communicating how adapting to a trust-oriented framework can improve the play at tables. In this accusation, I point many a finger directly at myself, as a large portion of my blog and presence in gaming spaces has been an attempt to promote these ideas.

I decided that I wanted to change my attempts, instead of attempting to drive the discourse on Discord, forums, and Reddit, I think we could band together as a community and make a sort of “how-to” run a fantastical world for your friends, something that could be given to someone with zero experience as a suitable starting point.

I’ve chosen to propose a sort of zine, or maybe a book, or who knows the format – as I have been writing some of the content and thinking of pieces I would enjoy having others contribute to or even propose, it certainly seems to be growing in scope, but I do think some kind of a lean toolkit would be best.

Here is kind of what I am thinking of, just to get ideas rolling – we would start with an example of play, hopefully, pulled from an actual session run by me or some other hypothetical contributor, perhaps even link to a recorded AP on some platform. I think the introductory “what is roleplaying”, especially from an old-school, FKR standpoint is always lacking. I know because I’ve written quite a few and failed to get the idea across, and many other writers have similar experiences.

Afterward, we would then kind of tackle “fantasy” as a genre or “milieu” – talk about different kinds, the different elements, and why it makes for one of the best (if not, the absolute top) styles of settings for roleplaying games, of course with lots of Appendix-N styled references – hopefully with a lot of diversity of authors, formats, and styles.

With introductions and setting-setting 😛 done, we’d move into the meat and potatoes of FKR – what it means to run a referee-oriented game, and discuss how and why a referee would choose to use a particular rule, or procedure, or make a ruling. We’d go over various methods for setting situations for the players to respond to vs. a more open-ended “I’m here to challenge whatever goals you have” style. We will compare and contrast various forms of character creation, from “write three interesting things on your sheet” to coming up with a very detailed and world-specific life path for communicating the world to players initially.

Following this, the bulk of the book will be tables, tools, and toys for people to use. Lists of magic powers, adventure seeds found in folk tales, d<WHATEVER> angry peasants, all the kind of system-neutral “content” one can pull at whim in a game to get a situation going or to find out how something develops. I am thinking of having people go wild with tables and such they would find useful for running any fantasy game, inspired by all the various OSR table supplements.

So I have a decent number of words put together towards the start of this, and what I am looking for is both feedback so far, and probably proposals for material anyone wishes to contribute. This would be a volunteer-only gig, and I know that is a heavy ask, but I do not intend to make any money off of this – I intend for such a thing to be completely free, and would we ever do a print run, all proceeds would go towards some cause all of the contributors feel comfortable with.

I am very open to ideas and proposals of all kinds, but I should clear the air on what I am not looking for. For one, no games – I don’t think any particular rules text can be FKR. I’ve mentioned many times before, but FKR is not a number of rules, it’s how the table plays with the rules they decide to use. I also do not want any theory whatsoever. I have gone to school for game design and while I understand the benefits some analytical lenses can have over gaming, I think roleplaying theory is for the most part extremely terrible, and I think the over-excitement of theory heads rushing to taxonomize the FKR like a bunch of vulturous wanna-be anthropologists has really been a detriment to the community.

I think this should also be obvious, but I am not looking for anything that “challenges” or “argues” against FKR and “first-principles” high-trust play. If you’re going to write that one must play “with training wheels” before approaching this style, I view you as antagonistic to this project’s goals. If you believe that formalized rules can overcome failures in the social health of the table, you’re the audience for this kind of book, not the authority on it.

I also don’t mean to gatekeep, but I would like contributors to be people who have experience running in this style. I want this to be a play-focused project with examples from people who have succeeded in playing this way. I hate hypothetical play almost as much as I hate theory 😛

Let me know your thoughts as I continue to write. Also – how would people like to organize? I was thinking of starting up a Discord server, but I honestly feel Discord is kind of a horrible platform for actual discourse and organizing. Maybe keeping the whole process distributed is preferable. I guess if people do wanna yell at me on Discord you can jump into my own little sleepy server here: https://discord.gg/xZpeCShTR8

Let me know what you think!

State pt. 2, Purity Tests

I have received many messages regarding my post from yesterday, quite a lot of corroborating of the state of the discourse, as well as many individuals wondering if and what can be done to salvage online discussion around games of this type. I should first clarify that while the driving factor for me to make these posts was a “final straw” so to speak in one particular community, I have been having issues with several “FKR” communities for a while now, some less recent than others. This is very much not a one-point issue and is instead a reflection, almost every year, of what the supposed FKR communities have become, situated around when the various Discord servers kind of popped off. If you speak with anyone who has known me for more than a month you’ll probably know that I have pretty much voiced my concerns since day one.

I have also seen concerns that my post is calling for some type of purity testing – that I want only TRV3 FKR, and that I am rejecting beginners and people with alternative playstyles alike, accepting only the most Rigid of… Not Rigid Kriegsspiel 😛

This couldn’t be further from the case, and if anything – I think the current state of discourse actually prevents beginners from discovering what I think is the most compelling and table-empowering playstyle, and I think it disallows us from actually growing FKR by any stretch as if we allow the playstyle to be “just vibes”, then there are no constraints, limitations, or unique features to follow, manipulate, and then break.

The FKR is one of the few communities I have seen where a beginner will ask for advice for getting into FKR, and while there are a few voices that want to lend aid because many of the communities are concerned with the vibe and getting along more than the playstyle, they also get the complete opposite recommendation – immediately a wet blanket will be thrown on stressing that “FKR isn’t for everyone” and that one must play with training wheels and instead pick up Misspent Youth, or My Life With Master, or study the methods of setting position and risk in Blades in the Dark.

Instead of being about playing worlds, we start suggesting rules. In an almost contradictory fashion people will say “It’s not about the rules”, and then the community will go back and say things like “PbtA can have a mature statement on violence… D&D can only express capitalistic colonialism.” And my beef with that last sentence has nothing to do with the particular games expressed or the descriptors used – you could swap them out with literally any other game or adjective and I would still say it’s just as bunk. It’s saying that the play outcomes are dominated by the rules text selected.

How does one rectify this with the idea that referees are to hold rules texts lightly, utilizing them as tools to portray a world? How can we claim that one game “requires” emotional connection, and another “punishes” with zero context of how the table is addressing any of this? How are we to ascribe moral qualities to the players of a particular game without being a part of the table they are at?

FKR is about relationships – to rules, to the conversation, to other players, and to play. Certainly, some tools are better than others at certain tasks, but the practice of actually playing is so unique to the individual table instance that I think any attempt to exalt or vilify any particular ruleset in a way where you ascribe unalienable moral, ethical, or societal qualities is not only missing the point to the highest degree – it is actively toxic to what FKR can become.

I do not bemoan anyone who does not like FKR – we can like different things. I also do not bemoan those who have different perspectives on what it is (within reason) – we definitely should be bringing our unique perspectives to the table. What I bemoan is the sadness I feel when I see people who have spent a sizeable amount of time in a place that many first feel excited and ecstatic to explore a playstyle so rarely discussed these days, and they are instead dampened by naysayers and carelords, such that many feel dissuaded from contributing.

Purity tests be damned, but can we at least talk about FKR from a positive, actual play experience before we try to establish theoretical hypotheticals where we argue that the rules text conveys or holds some authority? More “play worlds, not rules” like we’ve been saying for years now?

The State of FKR Discourse

If it hasn’t been obvious from some of my recent vague-posting, I have been pretty unhappy with the state of so-called “FKR” discourse. The term was used to describe an alternative to play where rules texts were given authority, and where the fiction was secondary to the mechanics. Where the idea that social issues, bad behavior, and aggressive game masters and players alike could be curtailed by somehow following the rules as some designer intended.

Instead, it refocused the game as being a representation of a fictional world, communicated and adjudicated by a referee to players taking control of characters in a world. The referee is free to use whatever means they see necessary to portray and resolve this world and the actions of the player, and no rules text, designer, or other set of people were seen as an “authority” over this.

This idea was first proposed by one of the original players in Gary, Dave, and Phil’s games, and it was later adopted by further bloggers who ended up creating Discord servers and the like based around the acronym. It’s worth noting that this term was originally proposed on an OD&D forum, and the later Discord creators were posting a lot about the types of games that surrounded Arneson’s group. So traditional high-trust play.

There was a split in this community, as there often is. I certainly landed on the side I supported, but so did quite a few new people who were unfamiliar with these origins or goals, and seemed more inclined to foster a new identity around a term that had a very small, but growing amount of hype and recognizability around it. The conversation became less an exploration of the growing concept of FKR, and more a forcible reframing of what FKR was – which basically amounted to whatever the specific individual was playing.

I have mentioned before that it’s fine for things to be different – not every game, practice, or culture should fit under every label. What makes specific playstyles special is their unique approach, not that they are an umbrella. But this seems to be contrary in some FKR circles as of late. Instead, they claim that the FKR should be “just vibes”, only excluding the games that fall under a particular individual’s pet peeve. Which unfortunately is usually just old D&D or “traditional” RPGs. So we have gone in a few short years from an OD&D forum creating the term to people trying to gatekeep those that use the 3LBBs to only being able to “support” certain kinds of play.

Note here the emphasis on systems – folks are claiming that if one plays OD&D, or “trad” the particular rules text they are using dictates the play experience. If you understand anything about FKR at all, you will understand how this argument reveals the particular Edwardsian chauvinist has yet to understand the culture of play. Because instead of trying to understand it, they just attempted to hijack it.

A quote from one of the recent discords is as follows:

If there is no mechanical reason to be invested in the emotional story at large; there won’t be a real reason to be emotional attached to things in the game either.
– supposed “FKR” discord user

Of course, they’ll then try to do the “I am very smart” argument of citing the Lumpley-Care principle that by “mechanic” they really mean “anything by which you resolve the situation”, but this quote comes from a diatribe against traditional play in favor of storygames, so it’s pretty clear “mechanics” is precisely what the average person would think, not the Forgehead definition.

Now, I don’t think “FKR” as a term is “dead”, or any other such pretentious nonsense, but I think we should have more care in being stewards of this community. It is sad how this term has been circling around the RPG scene for about three years now, and supposed participants of the community still feel a need to play games “as they were intended.”

Despite all of this belly-aching on my part, I want some ideas on how we could be better stewards of this community: positively push forward the actual term, promoting healthy rpg conversation and high-trust tables.

I am thinking of trying to put together a zine or something similar, something I’m initially ~~ripping off~~ calling “Play Worlds.” The idea would be something like GURPS’s genre books, but obviously without the GURPS, and a little less dry. So we’d put together something like “Play Fantasy Worlds” that would be articles, advice, and tools that a table of any experience level could pick up, empower a referee to portray a world (of their own, their tables’, or another’s construction), and give players the best working advice for playing as characters in such a world with high degrees of player agency and the concept of tactical infinity (anything may be attempted, but not everything is as likely to succeed).

Let me know what you think, especially of the Play Worlds idea. Thank you!

Thought this was obvious

but when people talk about FKR, they’re not talking about Powered by the Apocalypse, Wanderhome, or Blades in the Dark.

When we say “play worlds, not rules – players take control of characters in the world, referees adjudicate it, rules are tools” sort of stuff, we don’t mean mechanizing theme or having play structures around delegating authority, and making appeals to the rules text and game designer as something that can mitigate social issues.

This isn’t a value judgment, despite fans of the above games who want to bandwagon onto whatever niche they can for marketing purposes. You can like Wanderhome, and like a “referee is the rules” game of OD&D–.

“OSR is dead” is nonsense gatekeeping

I think if you need any proof that the OSR is living is to see how much naysayers continually feel the need to tell you that it is in fact, dead. Now you might provide obvious examples to all their arguments – there are still new and changing ideas coming out of it, and there are more people playing the “style” (by which I mean old school games and games inspired by such, I am referring to a much larger player base than just people who quote the Principia Apocrypha) than ever.

One of the most important points about the OSR is that it was not a recreation of some mythologized past. When you play an OSR game, you are most likely not playing how they did in the 70s. Granted, the styles of play were so diverse that maybe you are playing something in the ballpark similar to one particular campaign back then, but most likely that’s not the case. And there was certainly not one particular style, probably from the point that Dave ran a game for Gary & co., and then Gary started running for his players.

This “OSR is dead” as a whatever scene is doing similar mythologizing – it’s pointing to a hyped subsection of one OSR scene as the scene. It’s usually saying either the scene you participated in, or the scene your friends talked about was the real OSR, and since current OSRs are different, they’re obviously artistically or stylistically or thematically or whateverically “dead.”

It’s straight-up saying “the past I remembered was the one true way, and anything that existed contemporaneously to that wasn’t really part of the OSR, and anything after it is dead/undead/unliving.”

Go grab three random adventures or games or supplements prior to 2019. Go jump on a blog, a forum, and a chat room at that period. Grab Assault on Blacktooth Ridge and The God that Crawls and tell me that those two are part of a single, centralized artistic movement. Try to tell me that the K&KA OSRIC folk were part of some central discussion with the GLOG kids.

One of the killer features of “the” OSR was that it was decentralized, so I don’t see how saying “well there are more people now so it’s even MORE decentralized” is any further indication that this concept is dead, if anything it’s proof that its growing.

I have yet to see any argument that the OSR is dead is anything more than “the past that I remembered has more positive qualities than the past I didn’t participate in, or the present that is different from what I remember or was told about.”

Doomed Reach Session 4

Characters

Amon Amarth, the Dwarf Cleric of Holy Law
Kalos, the recently masterless Magic-User
Maur Stern, Cleric of Holy Law
Cirrel, Elven Herald
Florby, Elven Alchemist
Brother Murray, Cleric of the Light Above
Ki-Mun, the Dwarven dandy
Torin, the sneaky axe-wielder

Downtime

Our characters begin by recounting prior adventurers and shoring up an additional hireling to account for previous losses.

Florby convinces his hireling, who owned a Saint’s head, to put the head in a pot of water for a week. They then paid a street urchin to drink some of the water and found it to have a mild numbing effect.

Brother Murray continued teaching his pigeon and goat more adventuring tricks.

Cirrel was granted an audience with Lady Mecit, a new-to-the-Reach noble looking to reclaim her uncle’s manor after he went mad. He retrieved more information on the manor and promised expedition funding should the party agree to it.

Adventure

Our group returned to the very chaotic caves, witnessing a floating geode on the way that radiated a freezing field, wilting the plants it came across.

As they climbed the peak above the caves, they witnessed that the cultists had rigged up some noise instruments attached to decapitated zombie heads in their wooden watchtower overlooking the gully, seemingly to drone noise when noticing nearby living. Torin snuck up to the tower and quickly dispatched the grotesque sentries.

Succeeded in preventing alarm, they went to the caves and saw a new trap rigged, a mechanism to shut a portcullis behind invaders, and opening one in the hallway to unleash zombies. Having been cautious, the party downed the zombies with ranged implements, but not before the foul undead could cause much noise.

Traversing to the south, they entered the circular chamber that held a vat of writhing, living gore. Florby begged that they determine if this monstrous flesh creature was sentient and evil. Amon Amarth interrogated the mass but determined its gasping and wailing to be that of a chaotic being.

Seeing bloody tracks on the ground leading out of the room and checking its direction revealed two giant spider beings wearing cloaks, medallions, and weapons. The adventurers engaged them in combat, casting light into one’s many eyes, blinding it, and dumping holy water and fire onto the flesh creature, which rose to strike the party.

After a short battle and only a few wounds, they chased the blind spider to a dead end. The cursed being told them it had recently been recruited by the cult with its brother and that only six other cultists remained, hurriedly trying to bolster their numbers. It also revealed to them a secret door to the outside, but this was not enough to save it, as the party imparted fatal justice to the creature.

They wandered the complex some more – finding the ruby skull room from the previous week reset, they also found a room full of bones and shattered skulls, and Cleric Stern was able to locate a small emerald within. They also retrieved some silver and a pendant from the pit of burned gore.

Progressing north, they found an altar room with black marble pillars depicting humans in agony and bronzed ritual implements, as well as a fine tapestry depicting the Sanguine Skull’s dominance. Continuing to delve, they ambushed four cultists in the middle of a ritual to empower a glowing red skull and smote these acolytes and the skull.

They finally stumbled upon a massive ritual room, with the undead head priest and his ghoulish assistants getting ready to call forth something from the dark. Amon Amarth stepped up and repelled the ghouls with his faith just before they could ring some hideous bell, while the rest of the party engaged the high priest and came out victorious, although slightly shaken by a fear spell.

The ghouls ran from the priest into a room full of skeletal statues similar to those in the ruby skull throne room. Deciding not to enter, they doused the room in oil and ignited the ghouls.

The party then went about stripping this floor of the dungeon bare of goods – tearing tapestries from the walls, plunging priests’ quarters for magical items, and returning to town with many artifacts to trade for silver, as well as the reward and praise from the Bishop.