Author: robdalexander

Several things I have recently read and thought were particularly good, January 2019

~ robdalexander ~ Leave a comment

F M Geist, while talking about a variety of things in response to a post by Emmy Allen —

I’ve always thought of clerics as being like young men from the lower classes in any theocracy: they’re sent out to wage holy terror against others so that the religious order, hierarchy and viewpoint is not challenged because young men who might found a schism are busy dying somewhere. Also it would account for Clerics being somewhat capable fighters and devoted to weird shit about their religion.

(http://cavegirlgames.blogspot.com/2018/05/orcs-violence-and-evil.html?m=1)

Joseph Manola’s vision for how he would do Warhammer Fantasy now — http://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2018/10/bringing-down-hammer-part-12-my-own.html

Manola again, on how his dystopian setting Against the Wicked City is, against appearances, a romantic fantasy setting — http://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2016/06/romantic-fantasy-revisited-4-so-what.html .

Progress in rpg design

~ robdalexander ~ Leave a comment

(from an old G+ post I found while looking through my G+ export)

For some people, the idea of progress in RPG design is threatening — they like the games they have, and they don’t want them to change.

For others, the idea of progress in games is associated with assholes using it push the games they like, or the games they are selling (cf Vampire in the 90s, some of the Forge crowd in the 2000s).

For yet others, they see the counter-evidence to any simple story of linear hobby-wide progress. For example, the recent resurgence of OSR play as a reaction to the plotted-epic-story direction D&D took in the 90s and 00s.

I think progress is possible, and is happening (on multiple stylistic fronts, which as S John Ross points out in [his now-unavailable G+ post] it must do). But I’m not surprised when people don’t believe in it, or don’t like the idea.

Transactions and Rawplaying

~ robdalexander ~ 1 Comment

Paul Beakley has defined two new rpg theory terms which I think will be useful.

The Transaction — “The steps players engage in to settle outcomes in the fiction. … a subset of the much larger conversation in which all the play takes place.”

I don’t think that definition is particularly instructive, but the worked examples he gives in his post (for Scum & Villainy, Burning Wheel, and Apocalypse World) are much more so.

Rawplaying — “Playing an RPG by the rules because we earnestly feel the rules produce the best experience for us.”

The term is useful to me because while it’s not always what I do, it’s very often what I try to do. And there’s a big divide in rpg culture between people who take this seriously and people who don’t.

Structure-preserving transformations

~ robdalexander ~ Leave a comment

… following Christopher Alexander, positive change is a matter of producing “structure-preserving transformations” – starting with a core, and figuring out how to elaborate on the core in a way that produces wholeness, not mess. These possible transformations are what you’re looking for in problem-solving space: states of affairs that are near the current state of affairs but better, and achievable without destroying the dignity and cohesiveness of the existing state of affairs. Each transformation allows you to begin imagining further transformations from a new starting point. (source)

The Dungeon World core loop

~ robdalexander ~ 1 Comment

What is the core loop of Dungeon World? How are the high-level events in a game supposed to occur? The RAW is not precise to the specificity demanded by my exacting analytical genius. So I will describe it here.

Firstly, all of the below happens in context of my previous description The highest-level structure of Dungeon World. This loop is inside that. Key quote:

Dungeon World is a game of rules that modify a conversation. That conversation refers to a simulated world, which is modified by the conversation and in turn shapes the space of what is reasonable for the conversation to say at any point. The world does not have any more reality than that — it doesn’t “do” anything itself, unless the (rule-governed) conversation causes an update.

The loop

Continue reading “The Dungeon World core loop” →

The highest-level structure of Dungeon World

~ robdalexander ~ Leave a comment

This post describes how I view the highest-level structure of Dungeon World. Most of what I’ll say also applies to Apocalypse World, so I’ll mix discussion of the two with little warning.

The first level — everything is the conversation

Dungeon World is a game of rules that modify a conversation. That conversation refers to a simulated world, which is modified by the conversation and in turn shapes the space of what is reasonable for the conversation to say at any point. The world does not have any more reality than that — it doesn’t “do” anything itself, unless the (rule-governed) conversation causes an update.

For example, if the Red Knights haven’t been mentioned for six weeks of game time, they exist in a space of possibilities – they could be here, they could be there, they could be anywhere within six weeks travel of wherever they were last. The conversation can bring them into the current scene (or show their very obvious effects e.g. having burnt down a town and left their flags all over it) as long as that is consistent with the time, the distance, and whether of all of the chaos shrines in all the mountains of the world there is some plausible reason for them to show up in this one.

What the Red Knights don’t do is move around in the background, in some factual sense, even in the GM’s head. The GM may have ideas about this, but they’re merely ideas until the live conversation makes them fact. The GM’s prep is raw material, prompts, aids, but not reality.

I.e. the possibility and plausibility space is “real” beyond the conversation (and each player plus GM will be independently monitoring it to some degree) but the precise facts there are not.

Continue reading “The highest-level structure of Dungeon World” →

Three more notes on Apocalypse World

~ robdalexander ~ Leave a comment

From Jason D’Angelo’s “Daily Apocalypse”:

Who should adjudicate whether the immediate fiction meets a player move trigger? Baker —

If there’s a genuine disagreement, like if the player suckering someone can’t see how she could miss, in fact, then she shouldn’t automatically defer to the MC. She should hold the dice. The game can’t proceed until they come to an agreement, and the rules don’t care whose view prevails. It might be hers, it might be the MC’s, but somebody has to win the other one over.

…

Does the MC have final say? Sure! Does the MC have sole final say? No! Everybody has final say.

(source)

Note the assumption that the players are mature adults with reasonable levels of social functioning. AW is not built for teenagers, nor for people with major social disabilities.

In any interesting game, maybe we always “play to find out”. Games just differ in what we’re finding out about. Baker —

Continue reading “Three more notes on Apocalypse World” →

What Does Railroading Ever…

~ robdalexander ~ Leave a comment

This isn’t one of my “let me carefully review the basics of our hobby” posts — it’s a discussion on Story Games. Eero Tuovinen has a thread there called A Bit of Railroading Theory, which is exactly that.  It includes sections like “The creative payoff of railroading” that I think are sound (though note the objections raised by David Berg further down the thread).

Eero makes one major point that I think is right — railroading is a hard way to GM, at least if you want your players to have a good time. It’s not necessarily easier to make railroading work than to wing it:

“The historical tragedy of our hobby seems to be that railroading has been understood as the hiding place of the mediocre and the starter set of the newbie when precisely the opposite is the case: you should only do railroad play if you, alone, actually are capable of being an entertaining storyteller. If that’s not the case, the railroad bit is just an incidental detail, and the real issue with your game is that you’re putting a mediocre and boring thing in front instead of trying to hide it in the back, as a sensible person would [grin].” (source)

Ideas gleaned from dead cells

~ robdalexander ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been played Dead Cells today. It seems surprisingly good, and has given me ideas for rpgs, particularly dungeon/hexcrawl ones, and perhaps particularly for open table games:

  • Parcel out knowledge in little, mysterious hints of one or two lines. In session announcement emails, on playbooks and other props, hanging on the back of the GM screen today…
  • Random roll when you enter the dungeon for major state-changing events that day. E.g.
    • There’s a goblin raid ongoing in the section
    • The Goblin King has recalled all goblins for a feast, so there are no goblins other than there
  • Dungeon World (or similar) location moves that don’t supplement but replace the standard set. Have as cards/sheets that you stick over the standard list while in that area.
  • Enemies you can harvest for rare ingredients (seems obvious, but I’ve never done it)
  • Dole out world knowledge in tiny parcels through item names, in-game events (hearing that the Hate-Dwarves attacked means that you now know Hate-Dwarves exist), creature types (knowing that the Funnymen are wretched humans with bizarre things grafted onto them implies the existence of a malevolent grafter)…
  • People love treasure, especially if there’s a chance of a rare and valuable item. I’ve never got good at treasure — my default is to forget it entirely, or be realistic (and thus give far less than is best for player reward experience). For some games that doesn’t matter, but I rarely shift gears properly for games where it does.
  • Let players unlock things that will outlive their character — perhaps for them, perhaps for all players. Advantage of latter is that it makes player-player balancing easier.

D30 reasons someone is dead

~ robdalexander ~ Leave a comment

Want to explain a missing family member? Want to put a backstory to a grave? Want to be a dick and stop the players talking to that crucial NPC? I am the OSR, roll d30:

  1. Fell through a rotten floor into a nest of vermin
  2. Thrown from their horse when it was spooked by a ghost
  3. Skin sloughed off and blew away on the wind
  4. Became maudlin, stopped eating
  5. Hung themself out of spite
  6. Limbs turned into snakes and slithered off
  7. Challenged someone to a duel, killed them, killed in turn by a sibling
  8. Cursed by a boggart, dried out, shrivelled up
  9. Got an infection, swelled up, burst
  10. Took patent medicine for a headache
  11. Took to bed, raved prophecy for three days, expired
  12. An excess of laudanum administered for joint pain
  13. Ran wild with joy, fell in a pit
  14. Hit by an arrow meant for a cheating spouse
  15. Cheated on their spouse
  16. Ate very old beans
  17. Key parts wore out
  18. Bones ran away from them
  19. Years of hard living
  20. Years of loose living
  21. Picked a fight with a bear
  22. Jumped in to save another
  23. Something came at them out of the dark
  24. A long suffering neighbour put them out of his misery
  25. With each passing year, another ailment
  26. Was careless with tools
  27. Was barely noticed amid the many that winter
  28. Slowed to a halt over many years
  29. They shrank as their spouse grew
  30. No reasonable explanation, but here they are