Courtney Campbell couldn’t find random tables when he needed them, so he made a big list of all the ones he knew about circa 2011.
I have made this post so that I can find that again.
Month: June 2018
Enthusiastic assent is better than formal authority
Time for some fun in the post-Forge moonscape.
Jason D’Angelo wrote a very insightful analysis of part of Apocalypse World, and (in a comment) linked to Vincent Baker at http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/466 as being something that sets up a key idea for understanding that analysis. In that post, Baker makes three claims:
-
- “Moment-to-moment assent trumps pre-agreed authority, in every case.”
- “Any well-designed roleplaying game will assign (at least some) authority upfront.”
- “Some very good designers consider the assignment of authority to be the point of rpg design. I do not.”
As I find common for the Forge and its hinterlands, that sounded interesting, but I wasn’t sure what it meant. And it was clear from the first few comments that no-one else was sure either. My heart sank as a mess of confusion followed. Baker took a long time to express himself clearly; his many interlocutors took a long time to ask clear, explicit questions that squeezed said clear expression out of him. Sadly, when I go back to the Forge or its diaspora, this is my usual experience — it’s like there’s treasure there, but it’s sunk deep in a swamp.
There was a happy ending this time, though — having read the whole discussion, I think Baker’s point is fairly simple and quite useful.
What Baker is saying, put simply
Continue reading “Enthusiastic assent is better than formal authority”
Levels of detail for NPC design
Status — Conjecture, mostly untested. I have a suspicion that “levels” aren’t the best way to go about most of this — perhaps a flat list (“do at least three of…”), or a set of conditional rules (“if they’re ostensibly an ally of a PC, then describe…”), would be better.
Context
I’m writing this for my Beyond the Forest games. Key properties:
- Minimal rules complexity, characters are mechanically simple
- The story emerges from PCs pursuing their Burning Wheel -style beliefs — there is no “plot”
The Levels
Level 1 — People that exist
Give them:
- Name
- I make lists of names by type of character (e.g. noble, commoner, goblin), usually by choosing a theme from the Story Games Name Project (POD / free PDF etc) and making lists ready to be struck of as I use each name
- Build point value
- One descriptive thing
Level 2 — People that persist
Smart prep and conceptual density
Some good articles I’ve read recently:
- Joseph Manola observes that good setting and adventure materials have a kind of conceptual density that makes them novel yet cohesive.
- Justin Alexander has written two articles about what he calls “smart prep”. I agree with just about everything in the first one; I think that’s true for the second one as well, but I feel like I need to process it some more.
Joseph is talking about using third-party sources, while Justin is talking about making your own material, but there is a common theme — support material that’s no better than the ideas you can improvise on the fly is a waste of time. It’s not just neutral — it’s actively bad.
The Wrong Kind of Wax 