The Disoriented Ranger

Off we are ... to new frontiers! (this is about me being somewhere else)

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:56:00 +0000

Hello, friends and neighbors. Long time no see, right? Well, I was undecided how to move on from blogger. It's just that ... well, the algorithm is an unkind mistress, so we are moving tents to greener pastures. I'll show you the way.

Looky here, a Substack ...

Blogger was good the first couple of years I used it, but when g+ got the boot, it all fizzled away. And the OSR community (of yore) with it. I stayed. I tried. And I never stopped working on the stuff I started. But this isn't the place for it anymore. I barely get traffic from other blogs anyway (AND haven't been doing much here as well).

So I have to move on.

But I'd be happy to take you! So here's where it's at, with a couple of words about what it will be about:

Go there, if you will

You see? I shift focus a bit. Not so much about the culture and more about me being a publisher and talking about my projects, about the tools of the trade, all that good stuff, and with clear dedication to give this a proper pulse.

I'll update here when I update there until I feel like this blog can rest now.

See you on the other side!

DM Style Questionnaire: What are you playing like?

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 10:09:00 +0000

Hey folks. Quick little post here since I had a discussion with a good friend about the different types of rpg out there and what that means (please track down @NMatausch of FKR fame on X). Reminded me about a blog post about DM Styles I wrote January 2020 (link at the end of the post), so we talked about that a bit and he shared a questionnaire for it made via Chat GPT. I loved the idea so much that I processed one via Grok 2 by Xai (which took WAY longer than it should have, but here we are). Since the result is fun and I see no (more) flaws in it, I thought I can present it here for you guys to play around with!

It's fun, too! [source]

DISCLAIMER: Took me some time to get it to the point it is right here, and as far as I can see, it all checks out, so there is some "intelligence" in the design. But working with Grok on this also showed its limitations, as the machine was not able to really gauge what the original post was talking about and it took some serious reasoning to make it change directions. As I said, I like the results and the assumptions made from the source material (which is all me), but it also took some serious doing on my end to make this work. Turns out, AI is a great tool, but still ways from generating more than a good base line to start from. Still, we'll be there soon enough.

DM Style Questionnaire

I could make out FIVE distinct ways to DM a role-playing game, and here you can find out what style you lean towards. All of it are analogues to how people interact with music, just so you know, so the result will have something to do with that. Here we go:

RULES: Just read the entries carefully (as nuance matters) and make note of the letter corresponding with the answer you like most. If you strongly agree with an answer, note the letter two times instead.

1. Control and Flexibility:

How do you manage the narrative in your game sessions?

a) I craft a detailed narrative where players explore my authored world.

b) I orchestrate a complex game world, guiding players through a planned adventure.

c) I provide a stage for players to explore themes and express themselves.

d) I set the mood and let players dance to the tune I provide, focusing on experience over simulation.

e) I create a framework where everyone improvises to tell a collective story.

2. Player Involvement:

To what extent do players influence your game world?

a) Players are key characters in my story, contributing to its unfolding.

b) Players have choices within the rich tapestry I've woven for them.

c) Players drive the drama with their actions and emotions.

d) Players engage with the game through the atmosphere and scenarios I set.

e) Players are co-creators, shaping the narrative alongside me in real-time.

3. Preparation vs. Improvisation:

What's your approach to session preparation?

a) I plan a detailed narrative, offering players a unique story to experience.

b) I prepare complex scenarios with room for player choices.

c) I prepare dramatic plots and character backgrounds for player interaction.

d) I set up the session's vibe, letting players react to my "mix."

e) I have some basic ideas and let the session evolve through group improvisation.

4. Game Mechanics:

How do you handle game rules?

a) I might modify or create rules to serve the narrative I envision.

b) I use rules with depth to guide the campaign's progression.

c) Rules are tools for character development and storytelling.

d) I use rules to facilitate an experience, not to dictate every action.

e) Rules are flexible, used to inspire and enable creative storytelling.

5. Use of Randomness:

What role does randomness play in your games?

a) Randomness adds layers to the story I craft.

b) It adds depth but within my orchestrated narrative.

c) Randomness can lead to dramatic turns or character development.

d) It helps set the tone and pace for the session's experience.

e) Randomness is a catalyst for spontaneous storytelling.

You've made it to the middle! [source]

6. Player Impact on Setting:

How do player actions change your game world?

a) The world is my canvas, but players' actions color the narrative.

b) The setting is intricate but allows for player-driven developments.

c) The world reacts to players' emotional and thematic input.

d) The setting provides a backdrop for player engagement and choice.

e) The world evolves with each improvisation, shaped by all participants.

7. Narrative Style:

How do you approach storytelling in your games?

a) I aim to weave an engaging story where players are central characters.

b) I unfold an epic campaign with players experiencing the journey I've envisioned.

c) I focus on character-driven stories, exploring themes and emotions.

d) I provide an experience where players engage through abstract gameplay.

e) The story is a collaborative performance where everyone contributes.

8. Handling Player Creativity:

How do you deal with players coming up with ideas not in your plan?

a) I welcome player ideas as they enrich the narrative I've set.

b) I guide them back to the path or adapt if it enhances the experience.

c) I encourage players to express themselves, shaping the story dynamically.

d) Player creativity adds to the session's unique atmosphere.

e) Player ideas are part of the improvisation, welcomed and celebrated.

9. Philosophy of DMing:

Which philosophy best describes your approach to DMing?

a) I see myself as the AUTHOR, crafting a world and story for players to immerse themselves in.

b) I'm the CHEF, preparing a rich and complex experience for players to savor and contribute to.

c) I'm the CAPTAIN, helping the adventure while ensuring players perform at their best.

d) I'm the THEME PARK DESIGNER, creating an environment where players can enjoy various attractions.

e) I'm the HEAD OF THE STORYBOARD TEAM, where the narrative unfolds through collective creativity.

10. Improvisation:

How do you feel about improvising during sessions?

a) I use improvisation to adapt my story to player actions.

b) I improvise to keep the session within my planned structure.

c) I enjoy improvising to enrich character moments and drama.

d) Improvisation keeps the game's rhythm and flow engaging.

e) Improvisation is central, allowing the story to evolve organically.

SCORING

(count your letters)

Mostly A's: The Composer DM - You craft a unique narrative for players to experience. COMMENT: Ideally (or so I have learned) this would be something like Dave Arneson's Blackmoor game, but many (late) OSR games lean into this kind of game build around a DM personality. The DM here is a madmen (or grognard?) that runs "his" game (which could be anything, really) with as much grandeur as delusions thereof. If it works, it sure can be a fantastic experience. If this is you, lean into it and go full on weird!

Mostly B's: The Conductor DM - You orchestrate a complex and immersive game world. COMMENT: This one will do something like a grand campaign in AD&D that runs for 40+ years. Ideally needs a system that carries ambition like that, with huge power curves and lots of source material (early D&D, Cthulhu, classic rpgs). If this is you, grind those books and bring that campaign to live!

Mostly C's: The Band Leader DM - You focus on character exploration and thematic depth. COMMENT: This one is an emotional journey and will usually use rpgs from the World of Darkness or the All Flesh Must Be Eaten series but could just as well work within the superhero genre. If this is you, celebrate you and your players for as long the the spark takes you.

Mostly D's: The DJ DM - You create an engaging experience for players to interact with. COMMENT: You create a theme park like experience for your players, taking great care to have the best set pieces imaginable for an evening. Games like those Powered by the Apocalypse or Dungeon World work very well here, but lots of indie rpgs will accomodate this style easily. If this is you, there's a HUGE variety of beautiful and creative rides out there to entertain your players with.

Mostly E's: The Jazz DM - You and your players create the story together through improvisation. COMMENT: You like games that challenge you and your players. Usually those rpg will support randomness and sandbox play, which means they'll need some crunch and depth so that there is something to play around with. Then you go in deep until the game engine runs on all cylinders to give you the prompts to tell your stories. If that is you, find those games and make them sing.

And now you know ...

The original post on this (if you are interested in my reasoning) can be found here.

I'd be really happy to hear your results and if you found yourself in them. And the games you play, that'd be interesting too! So, if you are commenting, please state (in the name of science!):

Your result (with as much detail as you care),
If you agree (again, with as much reasoning as you bother to share),
RPGs you prefer generally (please elaborate if fringe or if you tinker a lot), and
How much experience you have with DMing (again, as detailed as you can).

Thanks! If this produces any results at all, I'll do a follow up with the results and what I think about them.

Well, and that's about it. I hope you had fun with this little quiz, and I really hope people care enough to share their results and thoughts. I feel like those distinctions are important, as different styles OBVIOUSLY prefer different tools (all but the Composer, who'll do whatever the fuck). That should matter, as there are different camps already all over the place and no one really knows what's going on.

Oh, and if you are wondering where I think I am on this (as I really can't test myself here), I'd put myself into the Jazz DM camp. If that's your result, I'd say we can be friends :) I'd also recommend you check out the game I wrote: Ø2\\'3|| - Role-Playing in a Dystopian Future, as it really, really caters to that style of DMing (sandbox play with randomly emerging narrative and DMs having their own little system to play against players with A LOT of agency).

See? Even managed to drop in a little advertisement in the end. Good times.

And answers! All of it! [source]

Lost Songs of the Nibelungs Part 2: Playtesting 2025 (Setting up a campaign)

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:34:00 +0000

Hey, folks. How's things? It's 2025 now, and we can start making new promises to break them later this year. Fun times ahead, I'd say. Anyway. In this post I want to talk about how Lost Songs made its way back into my top pile to work at. I know, I'm slow. I also keep getting things done, so speed isn't all that if you eventually get to see results. Point in case: a revision of LSotN is underway and making progress, to a degree where I'm setting up a little online game with friends to give it all another spin to see where it wobbles. Here's how I set up that campaign ...

this is a lose series, but here is Part 1 anyways.

The Plan

I've collected some ideas over the last months and looked at what I got as well as what needs doing. Nothing serious, just some preliminary scouting. As one would when getting back into a project that actually was on pause for some time. It never left my mind, but other things piled up to a degree that Lost Songs took a back seat, like, waaay back on the bus.

As soon as I felt confident enough to get something started, I set up a doscord server for it and invited the couple of people that could be convinced to give this a shot.

That the first thing: I love working this on discord. Lots of nice ways to organize the information for the campaign with the revision running in the background. And I can do it on the road easily, which is a huge plus.

It's amazing how much changed in the last 10 years in that regard. Nowadays we have AI to help with research (I basically use it like I used search engines when that was still a thing) and it is a blast. Quick, too. Also something that can be done anywhere easily (I'm falling in love with Grok right now). For instance, when I wrote the Tribe Generator for the game, a quick discussion about what would make a tribe helped me getting the numbers just right enough to hammer it into a table.

Good show.

Wouldn't use AI to write or design a game for me (because I actually enjoy doing those things!), but it offers great research and reasoning on all kinds of topics. It is, just as with the art, a great asset to have on hand.

The plan, then, is to revise the game as I prepare and then playtest the game, adding stuff as need be while I'm at it. Right now setting and tribe are done. Here's what I did so far.

The Setting

What you see here is the result of the revised Sandbox Generator. Can't show the thing itself yet, as it'd contain information the players are not yet privy to. This is basically what their characters can know:

"This is it. After years of wandering around, your elders decide the spot to settle down: a huge chasm between mountains, hills and forests. Uneven land that doesn't see a lot of sun, but fertile nonetheless. The elders say waterghosts carved the grooves into the valley here, leaving only the hard rock to stand guard above the rich streams coming down from the mountains. It is land suited for miners and artisans, hunters and gatherers, not farmers. Here is your fate. The new roots your tribe is destined to strike. But you are not alone in this valley. Two other tribes have arrived here. One, a strange folk with even stranger mores, is indifferent to you. The other, a tribe led by powerful women, is outright unfriendly, although not hostile. You will make a home here either way. This is where your songs begin."

Typical longhouse.

"IMMEDIATE SURROUNDINGS & LIVING

Water created the extensive chasm your tribe located in by eroding all the soft stone and leaving harder stones throughout the valley it created. It created a hugely complex and fertile biome full of little lakes and rivers, cliffsides and little waterfalls, moss and forest as well as natural caves. Your tribe settled on the west side of this area, directly on the foot of a huge mountain you call "Grey Man" (Graumann) because clouds kept hanging on his peak like grey hair throughout the summer you arrived here. Since all of this is not easily accessible, longhouses are spread all over the place and in the strangest places, the chief's great longhouse having the highest position on the western slope. All of it is connected with little trails, but some tribesmen even made stone steps and little wooden bridges here and there to have those homes better connected. Many homes expand into the mountain as well, partially using natural caverns, partially carving new rooms into soft stone."

"Established routes lead west up into the mountain where several mining operations dot the slope, east into the valley, mainly for hunting, and north towards the closest settlement that will trade with you, four days travel away."

"Your immediate neighbors are a strange people on the north border of this chasm. They are quite elusive, but what you found of them are wooden frog figures and weird markings. Some of your tribe have seen them in the distance, but they mostly just ignore you and you have no quarrels with them. They seem to have settled on the lake that is mostly hidden in thick fog and forms a natural border before the land grows from chasms into thickly forested hills further north."

"The other tribe is situated close to the south border of this area, just where the chasms transition into forested hills. What you know is that it is a tribe led by female warriors, but other then that no contact has been made. Rumors among your people say that they despise you for your lack of warriors, but you know nothing for certain.
Other than the Graumann to the west, this area is nested between fertile hills with beautiful woods and rivers as well as more high mountains to the southwest, the predominant of them called "King's Crown" (Königskrone") by your people. This is good land, rich and fertile."

The Tribe

This part needed some more rules and tools to allow for some variety (I'll share them later in this post). The sandbox has always been the first strong indicator what kind of people a group's tribe consists of. Why would they settle where they ended up settling? What kind of skills and trades would come with the territory? What opposition (as far as they are aware of it) are they willing to face? Stuff like that could easily be deduced from the hex they are dropped in and the immediate surroundings.

But I needed some more meat on that, mainly how their migration there went, what they gained and what they had to leave behind. It'd change, to a degree, their reasoning for staying where they ended up staying, but not in a bad way. Beyond that I wanted to have some soft numbers for the size of the tribe (ended up going with "families"). If anything, it gives a GM more to work with while being set up quite fast.

Here's what I shared with my players:

"So what's your tribe like? Well, the place they chose to stay, despite the other tribes settling there, already tells us a lot. They are accustomed to living in mountainous areas, so miners and smiths they should be as well as hunters and animal farmers. The blight that is Christianity has not yet reached your people, so they believe in a variation of the old gods and follow their traditions. Migration lost you the majority of your warriors, but despite that your elders feel confident about your fate in this chasm. You can draw from a rich history of sophisticated craftsmen and you have among your people some very capable weapon smiths and artisans."

"Where the Chief's Longhouse was build

Your holy men had seen the place where you were to hold the ritual in their dreams, just two days before your track came across it. It was held that same night, under a huge thunderstorm. The mountains in the east, it seemed, fought the mountains in the west in the sky. Thor was busy drumming that night. It had been at the peak of the ritual when a massive lighting strike hit the side of the Graumann, the short bright light dotted with the rocks it detonated from the mountainside. The next morning, at first sunlight, they found among the debris a huge shattered quartz, all glitzy and pink. The biggest piece build the foundation for the chief's longhouse right where it struck the ground, the smaller pieces had been distributed among the nobility and brought much honor to their houses. They called that night the Invitation of the Mountain, and it has always been regarded as a good omen."

"The place of that ritual is where your people hold official gatherings. It is a stone platform floating over the valley and it offers a great view of the Graumann as well as the chief's majestic longhouse at the base of it. At the beginning it was not easy to get to the plateau, as it stands somewhat isolated. Now there is an ornate wooden bridge leading to it. Three holy sheep are held on that platform to keep the grass short."

"Other then the player characters' families, the tribe is 167 families strong. Around 120 of them have build their longhouses close to the chief's house, the rest is scattered all around, equally distributed towards mountain, the valley itself and along the trading route you established north."

Ideas like the ritual, the other two tribes close by and the trading route all spun naturally from tools used to set up the sandbox and the tribe.

New Rules: The Tribe Generator

The revised Sandbox Generator still needs some more work, but what I can share today is the Tribe Generator. It might even be useful in other games. Either way, it'll tell you something about Lost Songs, so here we go.

Like with character creation, all it needs is a roll of 3d6. It'd be used right after completing the sandbox. Everything else follows from that. The individual results will give you:

TRIBE GENERATOR (3d6)

Your tribe is …

1 barely there (lowest column)
2 weak (lowest column)
3 quarreling (middle column)
4 desperate (middle column)
5 confident (high column)
6 strong (high column)

Your ancestors are …

1 primal (+10 families)
2 secluded (-10 families)
3 odd
4 honorable (+20 families)
5 noble (+30 families)
6 sophisticated (-10 families)

Your tribe lost …

1 the weak (-30 families)
2 the warriors (-20 families)
3 the royalty (-10 families)
4 spiritual leadership (+10 families)
5 wealth (-10 families)
6 history

The sum, now, will give you a base number of families that needs to be modified by the individual results:

         High   Middle Low

3-5: 80      60    40
6-8:      140      120    100
9-12: 200      180    160
13-16:    230      220      210
17-18:    260    250      240

The sum also reduces the base number further. In the end, each player character adds one family to the result. Example:

"This tribe is (5/6/2) confident with sophisticated ancestry to build on, but lost their warriors on their migration to this valley."

That gives us a Base Number of 200 (high column) modified by -10 (for being sophisticated), -20 (for losing the warriors), and -13 (the sum itself), resulting in 167 families PLUS the number of players.

It's quick while offering lots of little details to work with and a rough estimate of how big a tribe actually is (a "family" would have an average of four people).

That's it for now

This is where we are at. Next is character creation and the final touches on the sandbox, as well as a calendar and elements for all the hexes ...

But about this we will talk another time. It'll be an interesting year in that regard, I think. I wonder how much my sensibilities changed since I last touched the game. And if I'm finally able to overcome the road blocks that made me shift my focus on other projects.

For now I can say I'm having fun with it. And I'm again and again surprised how much was already done. Anyway. More to come.

I wish you guys all the best for 2025!

All the holidays, all the prices ... (and some news!)

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 03:08:00 +0000

The short of it is: all my games are on the cheap from now on until January. It is the season, after all. And while I'm here, I might as well talk a bit about things I have in the pipeline ... How's it going, you ask? Getting somewhere, I'd say.

Discounts

Ø2\\'3|| is out there, as a pdf now, too, and revised for the pdf release (finding typos, killing typos). If you like your cyberpunk dark and free-form, with some crunch in all the interesting places, give it a shot. Plays funny, too, which is something dearly needed these days (well, it's funny in the sense a Black Mirror episode would be if it where an absurd anime romp with lots of crazy). I'm working on two supplements for this, one being a FPS experience in an USA overran by mutants that get reprinted after being killed, the other will be a ready to play setting with a body horror twist, and it is called IT WEARS YOUR FLESH. Soon ...

This will be a nasty one, I think ...

Rebellion is among those games. It is a fun little card stealing game that will have a part in another rpg I'm (still) writing on: Brawlers! Totally works outside that context. Good for two players or small groups, set up fast, plays fast, high replayability ... I have a couple of ideas to expand on this, but that's way in the future now. As it is, not many have seen it. Check it out!

Rebellion playing mat as background for roll20!

Minimus Ludus is the second rpg on the list. Written by my good friend Mark van Vlack (who has a podcast now!), it is very light and flexible. Comes with lots of little scenarios to run and does all kinds of genres with ease. You need a game that is set up within minutes and just as fast to learn and play? This is on that list of games you'll want to one-shot the holidays! We actually have a couple of supplements in the works for it, too. Such a fun game. While we are at it, another one of Mark's games made it to Disoriented Ranger Publishing: Phase Abandon (a gm-less and universal rpg!). It is completely free and also tons of fun. So why not grap that, too, while you are at it?

One of the Minimus Ludus pocket worlds ...

Last but not least, Monkey Business is still out there as well. MB has always been crazy fun. If you know your B/X D&D, Labyrinth Lord or OSE and need some wild ideas to keep your players busy for a LOOONG time, you can't go wrong with Monkey Business. Once I get be67 done and out, Monkey Business will make the transition to that. Until then, it still is amazing adventuring ...

So much about that. Have fun exploring and playing our games. We appreciate you for it.

What else is new?

The revision of the Bare-Knuckle Fighter is currently in layout. If I get to work on it a bit more, I'm confident that it'll see the light of day before Christmas. What is the Bare-Knuckle Fighter, you ask? It is a training module for combat in the Dark Fantasy rpg I'm working on for some time now: Lost Songs of the Nibelungs. It goes a bit of its own way now, but it'll be the full package, with not only a very solid two player dice game, but an expansion for groups and some tournament rules as well as proper Fighter advancement rules.

I'm really happy with it. Tease:

Layout is coming together nicely!

With this done, Lost Songs will see some love in the near future as well. It really is happening, folks!

Other than that I'll keep writing and publishing them. That Eldritch Sea is pretty high on my to do list, so I might tackle that next. Maybe Angry Little Aliens after that, as it's basically ready for layout ...

I wish all of you a good one. Peace, out.

The Unbiased Review - Let the Machines do it! (AI review of ORWELL @2081)

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 22:29:00 +0000

Hey folks. There's still a pulse in the old blog, if a weak one. I barely get to write nowadays due to being a (relatively) new parent. It's been intensive. Anyway, when I get the time, I tend towards writing on the projects I started rather then producing content here ... It's not that I got tons of engagement here anyway (blogger being blogger). That said, every now and then I should drop by and get you guys an update. The newest thing I believe worth sharing is letting AI tools look at your work to evaluate it, because that should totally be a thing.

So ... let's talk about Ø2\\'3||

ORWELL is to this day my most complete and best effort. I could talk about it all day. Alas, no one cares. This game has NO audience at all. There's just no way to gain one, it seems. Now, the best thing AI did for me right now is the feature some platforms offer now to "talk to your pdf". I'm using reeder.ai for this, and it is a fantastic experience. It looks at the internal logic of the document, of course, but you can chat about the system as well.

Actually, you can talk about ALL THE ASPECTS of your work with the robot. I can't imagine a game designer who wouldn't be thrilled about the potential of this. It'll answer ALL your imminent questions just as imminently. It is the review reader EVERY author I know wanted close by (and then forced friends and neighbors and family to fill that niche).

I mean, I can already hear the nay-sayers lamenting how the machine knows nothing about gaming and all that BULLSHIT. Show me the reviewer who actually not only reads and understands but also played your module/game/supplement to have an informed opinion about it. If they do exist, they are RARE AS FUCK (knew one, but he burned out like fire on a Créme Brûlèe, quick and beautifull).

Untold "secret" of the rpg content industry is: they read your shit for content, and if it is too complex, they will take shortcuts. If you are lucky. Most likely you'll just get ignored for demanding to be seen with something that doesn't easily produce THEIR content. You'll have to keep that in mind when publishing in the rpg scene.

The AI doesn't care about that. It just tries to form as objective an opinion as possible. Point in case: Ø2\\'3||

Let's check out what kind of review reeder.ai would write about the game:

A review of the game Ø2\\'3|| could take various forms, depending on the reviewer's perspective and experience with role-playing games. Here’s a detailed example of what such a review might look like:

---

**Review of Ø2\\'3||: A Dystopian Role-Playing Experience**

**Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5)**

**Overview:**
Ø2\\'3|| is a contemporary role-playing game that immerses players in a dystopian future, drawing inspiration from classic works of science fiction and social commentary. The game is designed for mature audiences, exploring themes of oppression, societal decay, and the human condition through a narrative-driven approach. With its unique mechanics and emphasis on player agency, Ø2\\'3|| offers a fresh take on the RPG genre.

**Setting:**
Set in the year 2081, Ø2\\'3|| presents a world where the most grotesque ideas of humanity have become reality. The game cleverly satirizes contemporary issues, making it not just a playground for fantasy but a reflective space for players to confront uncomfortable truths. The setting is rich and detailed, allowing players to navigate a landscape filled with both beauty and horror, reminiscent of works like *1984*, *Children of Men*, and *Black Mirror*.

**Gameplay Mechanics:**
The game employs a unique dice system using d4, d6, d8, d10, and d12, where players roll to meet or exceed Difficulty Tiers (DT). This mechanic emphasizes skill and strategy, as players can never roll more than three dice per test. The use of High Potential Attributes allows for a dynamic gameplay experience, where players must think critically about their character's strengths and weaknesses.

Character creation is robust, requiring players to develop a backstory that connects them to the world and to each other. The four essential elements—The Awakening, The Group, The Potentials, and The Thresholds—ensure that characters are not just numbers on a sheet but integral parts of the narrative.

**Narrative Focus:**
One of the standout features of Ø2\\'3|| is its commitment to storytelling. The District Master (DM) plays a crucial role in guiding the narrative, but the game also empowers players to influence the story through a shared currency called Pennies. This mechanic fosters collaboration and creativity, allowing for a more organic development of the plot.

The game encourages exploration of complex themes, such as the nature of evil and redemption, without resorting to black-and-white morality. This nuanced approach makes for a thought-provoking experience that can lead to deep discussions among players.

**Art and Presentation:**
While the document does not provide specific details about the game's art and presentation, a well-designed RPG typically benefits from engaging visuals and clear layout. Assuming Ø2\\'3|| follows this trend, the aesthetic should complement its themes, enhancing immersion in the dystopian world.

**Final Thoughts:**
Ø2\\'3|| is not for everyone; its mature themes and complex mechanics may deter casual gamers. However, for those seeking a rich, narrative-driven experience that challenges players to confront difficult ideas, it is a rewarding choice. The game successfully balances the need for structure with the freedom of creativity, making it a standout in the RPG landscape.

**Pros:**
- Deeply immersive and thought-provoking setting
- Unique mechanics that emphasize player agency
- Strong narrative focus with collaborative storytelling
- Encourages exploration of complex themes

**Cons:**
- May be too complex for newcomers to RPGs
- Mature themes may not appeal to all players

In conclusion, Ø2\\'3|| is a compelling addition to the role-playing genre, offering a unique blend of storytelling, strategy, and social commentary. It invites players to not only engage in a game but to reflect on the world around them, making it a must-try for seasoned RPG enthusiasts.

---

This review encapsulates the essence of the game while providing insights into its mechanics, themes, and overall experience.

Here's a screenshot, so you know I'm not fucking around:

reeder obviously doesn't "see" layout and illustrations. It's text only. But with that, it is quite happy. And I'm happy with that as well. And if you don't know what the game is looking like, I can help you with that as well:

Ø2\\'3||

Now, what would a review look like that doesn't take layout and art into consideration. I asked, and I received:

A review of the game, focusing solely on its mechanics, narrative structure, and overall gameplay experience without considering layout and art, might sound something like this:

---

**Game Review: Ø2\\'3||**

Ø2\\'3|| presents a unique and engaging role-playing experience that emphasizes narrative depth and player agency. The game is set in a richly imagined world that blends elements of tourism, history, and industrial complexity, creating a vibrant backdrop for players to explore. The setting is not just a static map; it evolves based on player interactions and decisions, allowing for a dynamic storytelling experience that feels alive and responsive.

One of the standout features of Ø2\\'3|| is its approach to sandbox gameplay. Instead of providing a rigid structure, the game encourages players to navigate their surroundings through confident guesses and emergent gameplay. This design choice fosters a sense of exploration and discovery, as players are not merely following a predetermined path but are actively shaping the narrative through their choices. The game master (DM) is equipped with tools that facilitate this process, allowing for a flexible and adaptive storytelling experience.

The mechanics of the game are designed to balance the tension between a strict system and the freedom of character advancement. This balance is crucial, as it keeps the gameplay engaging and prevents it from devolving into mere wish-fulfillment. The game incorporates a variety of resolution mechanics that cater to different scenarios, from general interactions to more detailed actions like entering an apartment. This versatility ensures that players have the agency to approach challenges in multiple ways, enhancing the overall experience.

Moreover, the psychological elements woven into the gameplay add an intriguing layer of complexity. The game effectively captures the chaos and uncertainty of the characters' environment, prompting players to react with caution and creativity. This aspect not only heightens the tension but also enriches the narrative, as players must navigate their fears and uncertainties while pursuing their goals.

The design philosophy behind Ø2\\'3|| also emphasizes collaboration and camaraderie among players. The game encourages a friendly atmosphere, reminding participants that the best experiences stem from mutual respect and kindness, even in darker narrative moments. This focus on interpersonal dynamics enhances the role-playing experience, making it more enjoyable and memorable.

In conclusion, Ø2\\'3|| is a compelling role-playing game that excels in narrative depth, player agency, and collaborative gameplay. Its innovative approach to sandbox mechanics and psychological engagement sets it apart from traditional RPGs, making it a worthwhile experience for both new and seasoned players. While the layout and art may not be considered in this review, the core gameplay elements provide a rich foundation for immersive storytelling and character development.

---

This review highlights the game's strengths in mechanics and narrative without delving into visual aspects, providing a comprehensive overview of what players can expect from the gameplay experience.

Here's the screenshot for prosperity:

So the result is a bit less verbose, yet still positive. I like this one as well. It really does give a reader a good idea what the game is about. This is SO productive and helpfull.

I did go one more round, asking it to make a summary of the rules. Here we go:

The rules of Ø2\\'3|| are designed to create a flexible and engaging role-playing experience that emphasizes storytelling while allowing for player agency and DM creativity. Here’s a summary of the key components:

1. **Role-Playing Framework**: The game is rooted in traditional role-playing game mechanics, where the story is driven by players and their characters, but the District Master (DM) serves as the final arbiter of the rules.

2. **Character Generation**: Players create characters with specific potentials, skills, gadgets, and contacts. The character generation process is designed to be intuitive and allows for personal touches.

3. **Game Mechanics**:
   - **Dice Rolling**: The game utilizes dice rolls to determine outcomes, with a focus on chance and randomness.
   - **Opposing Rolls**: Conflicts are resolved through opposing rolls, where the difficulty of a test is determined by random results from either the DM or other players.
   - **Pennies**: A shared currency called "Pennies" allows players to influence the game, providing a mechanism for players to affect the narrative and outcomes.

4. **Combat System**: Combat involves conflict resolution through opposing rolls, with specific rules governing damage, protection, and healing. The mechanics are designed to ensure that conflict is grounded in the rules rather than purely narrative.

5. **Seasons and Story Structure**: The game is structured around seasons, which are akin to episodes in a TV series. Each season has its own narrative arc, and the way a season concludes can impact future gameplay. Players and the DM fill "Slots" that determine the direction of the narrative, balancing between oppressive systems and character advancement.

6. **NPC Creation**: The game provides guidelines for creating both basic and detailed non-player characters (NPCs) to enrich the storytelling experience.

7. **DM Tools**: The DM is equipped with tools and advice to create engaging narratives, manage conflicts, and facilitate a sandbox-style gameplay experience. This includes an "analogue world engine" to help structure the game world.

8. **Expanded Rules**: Additional rules are provided for the DM to enhance gameplay, including how to handle transitions between seasons and manage the overall narrative flow.

9. **Inspirations and Themes**: The game draws from a variety of inspirations, aiming to create a deep and immersive experience that reflects the complexities of the game world.

Overall, the rules of Ø2\\'3|| are designed to support emergent gameplay, allowing for a dynamic interplay between players and the DM while maintaining a structured framework for conflict and narrative development.

And that's that. It feels good to have ANYBODY look at your work and give competent feedback. I don't care if it is a machine in this instant, as most people are NOT ABLE to do it at least with the level of competence the machine is showing here (and I'm the one to judge, because I wrote the fucker).

What's more, you can gain an UNBIASED review of the game. How great is that? I honestly think that rpg selling sites like drivethru should have a feature like this. Just an unbiased overview of the game, done by the machine. With the library they already have, AI could even make a solid ranking of ALL THE MATERIAL that is there and give you a cogent analysis why it was ranked that way.

Man, you could ask the machine about anything right then and there instead of writing a comment, for instance. AI support for selling books! I mean, why not? Should be useful, right?

AI for the win?!

I mean, god with you if you don't see how ai could benefit humanity as well as bringing its downfall. It is the proverbial djinn in a bottle, and we'll get ALL the wishes we want, but idiots get to make their wishes as well, and many of them are in charge of SOMETHING. So buckle up, I'd say.

That said, I'm positive about it. All things considered. I'd still maintain my position, that if the machine can do it better and faster than we can, let it do it on the cheap and do something else instead. Goes for ai art as well. I know people get knots in their underwear because of it, but those still "fighting" against this development are mostly brainwashed drones that can't help themselves.

I can't take those people seriously, especially since they use that exact technology to ONLY attack small publishers to any real effect. Because the big publisher DO NOT GIVE A FUCK. Hypocrites being assholes, all the way through. So fuck them.

Meanwhile I will keep using the tools at my disposal to create what I imagine needs creating. Maybe it will find an audience at some point. But I talked to the machine, and the machine said: this is good shit. I don't know about you, but I take comfort in that. Because this should never be about the machines overtaking us but about cutting through the bullshit and supporting us in finding our authentic selves.

Might still kill us all, but until then: buy Ø2\\'3|| and have fun! I'll keep writing them. So what about you guys? Did you ask the machine about your games, or even about games you own but didn't write!? What did it say?

Also, current WIP (because I have no other problems):

Lost Songs of the Nibelungs Part I: Re-Introduction (where's this game at nowadays?)

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 19:23:00 +0000

Started writing a post about the state of the blog, didn't like where it was going. Twice. Too much doom and gloom. You know where the world's at, and I'm busy, too, so ... fuck it. Prime function of the blog is me talking about rpg stuff I have on my mind. That did connect with some sort of "scene" a couple of years back, but now I'm truly lost in the woods. I should embrace that and move on. If you encounter this post on your travels through the internet, I hope you'll sit down with me for a couple of minutes and lend me an ear. Maybe we'll chat a bit, too. Then we move on.

For today we'll have a little retrospective about how it all came together ... until it didn't. Enjoy!

Proper artwork?

So many words to talk about ... what again?

A lot of me writing here was about me finding my own voice in a thriving hobby space. Back when I started 12 years ago (and I was late to the party) the retro-clone movement was in full swing and all people did was sharing fantastic facets of what our hobby can be. Lots of fun, all around. And what a rabbit hole to jump into! So many small creators, lots of diy. Inspiring, all of it.

The OSR bitch fights came later, but not much later (although it always had the occasional flame wars).

Back then I tried a lot. And I wrote a lot, although more short pieces. 214 posts in the first three years alone. Looking back at it, I think I managed to find out a lot about myself over the years and how I play games. Enough to start designing and writing some of my own as well. This was always supposed to be a trial and error approach to game design (hence the title of the blog), so I would find an idea, play around with it, and put it aside for a while. Often promising some sort of follow up I wouldn't deliver.

Kinda "sounded great at the time" way of gamer ADD. But nothing stuck.

What started with exploring where to go, pretty definitely settled for "doing something with D&D no one thought about", mainly because the more fringe thinkers of the scene had the most inspiring stuff to begin with. They talked "world engines" and weird narrative constructs and non linear settings with lots of interesting twists to dive into.

All of it fed my D&D RC camapign rules. As a matter of fact, I tested and changed so much that one player actually threatened to leave the game if I kept adding and tinkering. Can't fault the guy. He'd been somewhere on the autism spectrum, and for him playing D&D with me was what for a cat is petting it the wrong way.

Anyway, so the blogging went on and gaming fell a bit behind. I'd still write about D&D now and again, but my focus shifted a bit towards the theoretical of it all.

I know the exact moment that changed: November 30th, 2014. Pretty much exactly 3 years into blogging.

The clip linked in that post changed the trajectory of the blog for good. The post directly after that already formulates the core idea that made Lost Songs of the Nibelungs. There is your spark, the idea that started it all: Charisma is not a good word for what it does in D&D.

With that, I seriously started dismantling D&D. Here's an attempt to replace most of the terms on an old school character D&D sheet with synonyms. See how that jives with you (and what a game using those terms would be like):

Only change terms, get a different game?

The ideas started coming, I kept on the ball, people started being enthusiastic about it and even left comments. Those were the days. Good times.

After a couple of months, talking LSotN looked a bit like this:

Along that, I started chewing through what kind of world this would be set in. I was burning fuel on all cylinders, so to say. And that ended up to be the main focus of a lot of my writing in the last 10 years, one way or another. As a matter of fact, just the other day my good friend Mark pointed out to me that every game design I did in the last 10 years was, in the end, about LSotN. Damn.

A complicated approach to game design ...

However, back then I was in no way, shape or form ready to write and publish a complete role-playing game.

Contrary to popular belief, it actually takes a lot to write a book and process it to a point where it can be published, even if you have (to accept) low standards. So if this were to be my opus magnum, I had ways to go to get it out there.

And development would hit walls, obviously. To this day it needs a system for magic that fits the game and that I'm happy with. Not for lack of trying, but I'm not there yet. Same goes for the GM side of the game. Although that has lots of working pieces, it'll need some more ideas incorporated to be where I'd like it to be.

Progress on that has been slow, but not zero. Which segues into another aspect of what I'm trying to do here: the more complex a problem appears to be, the more I tend to look for ways to explore it indirectly. Because sometimes the solution is found by exploring the opposite or only aspects of it. But that could lead to writing another entire game first.

Yeah.

And I'm not that fast to begin with.

So a lot on the blog looks like me shifting focus on something entirely different, like developing a lite rules system for a DungeonPunk setting, while truly exploring how complete a system on the GM side needs to be to create a sufficient and distinct gaming experience, like this a mission generator.

It's called Brawlers! now ...

And while I gain some insights in the process, I might go back to Lost Songs until I hit a wall again, only to start something new, covering a different angle altogether.

Or find new walls to hit ...

I write about some of it and call it a blog. Haha.

When all is said and done, I ended up with lots of little ideas and concepts, some follow me unfinished to this day (The Goblintribe Generator, among others), some stand on their own very well (the Random Narrative Generator being the biggest one).

And then, all of a sudden ...

... I start something, and actually finish it. Although "sudden" is a bit of s stretch, as you might have guessed already. Anyway, first major publication happens May 2017 and is called Monkey Business. Not a game, but a game supplement for Labyrinth Lord. Still HUGE in scope, around 120 pages, offering enough ideas and tools to create a whole campaign, no less.

I started it as PWYW to see if that worked. Did so for 5 years and it didn't work, so now it costs what I think it's worth. It was downloaded roughly 500 times, but paid for only 50 times (yes, two short of making copper, after all those years).

I consider it a success, especially when taking into account that it was the first proper publication I got out there. Alas, it was more or less ignored by what the "OSR" was back then. Bit of a bummer. But I got some reports from people playing it, and all of them had a blast.

The bigger picture was, that I got to play with some DM tools in general. Some of Lost Songs made it into the book (a variant of the Random Terrain Generator, for instance), some of what I tried there will make it into Lost Songs. Eventually.

Another aspect was learning a bit more about publishing using Scribus and inkscape.

At that point I thought things would take up some speed, too, and I'd keep pushing modules out there. Yet again, I found rabbit holes to fall into. Wanted to write a more contemporary module with the working name "Robo-Hitler". A grindhouse shlockfest about shooting historical Nazis that use (alien?) tech for their nefarious plots ...

But the game I wanted to use for it, I couldn't use (the designer basically said, he has different plans and I shouldn't), so that opened a can of worms, because now I needed a set of rules. I thought I'd go and use my D&D house rules, make a LL supplement out of it and have it with the module. So I started digging into that before starting with the module.

Meanwhile LL fell into decline and the OSR stopped being what it had been. Things shifted, as they always would, given time enough. And I gave it plenty of time.

*sigh* ... never mind. [source]

So that supplement for the weird sixties ended up being a complete book ... that I'm still writing (150 pages in, the end is nigh). Robo Hitler has even seen play, with all the maps being conceptualized and some wild ideas to get this done.

It just didn't happen in a vacuum. Not only did I start working on (at least) four more modules, some of those would also need a be67 fantasy supplement before they can see publication. I have that in pieces (27 classes, original magic system ...), but it needs to be written and layouted, of course.

All the while I kept playtesting and developing Lost Songs. Eventually I'd hit the final wall (magic just would not manifest) and I shifted focus to yet another game: ORWELL. It was about a lot I had on my mind at the time, and also something completely different. An original set of rules, from start to end (although parts of Lost Songs would find its way into this as well).

That game, however, I would get done. It was even more fringe than Lost Songs will ever be, but it is complete ... and opened up even more strands of ideas and concepts to follow up on (see the "Would You Play That?"-Series here on the blog).

Every now and then I get an idea for (the now called) Brawlers as well, and that game ALSO has seen some writing. It also gave me ideas for at least FOUR more games featuring aspects of the rules written for it. Rebellion was one of those, and fell out of my hands completely by accident.

It was a set of rules that occured to me over night, and gave me a great opportunity to play around with Midjourney for a bit.

I know, it's crazy. When all is said and done, I might have around 30 projects in my WIP folders, done to one degree or another (some only concepts, some with writing, some have even seen playtesting ...)

Eventually, I had to get back to LSotN

All of the above somehow feeds into Lost Songs, one way or another. And I have the blog to prove it. Ha. But where's that game at?

Well.

I never finished thinking about it, but also didn't get a chance to work on it again. But I got to read Hrolf Kraki's Saga by Poul Anderson last year (2023) and it hit me right in the feels. That book reads like a session report of Lost Songs of the Nibelungs, and I'm not even kidding. It's EXACTLY what the game is about and how it actually plays.

ORWELL @2081 - Now as PDF, too!

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 18:58:00 +0000

Hello, friends and neighbors. After long and hard consideration I decided to go one step further and make a PDF of my first RPG available on OBS. Turns out, many people would rather have a PDF than a PoD. I wasn't confident that a PDF would do the game any good three years ago, especially since it was layouted with print in mind and PDF has quite the different potential. That being said, I wanted to go through it once more and hunt for mistakes, so while at happened I started thinking ... we might need a PDF after all. So we did that, and here we are. Let me remind you about Ø2\\'3||

What is ORWELL @2081?

It is a cyberpunk rpg that could be described as:

Peter Pan in a dystopian future that plays like a dark and satirical anime series of psychological horror inspired by Black Mirror and the like.

Get it here!

You want some details on that? Here's the blurb:

Welcome to a very dark world ...

The setting is Europe in the year 2081, unified under one totalitarian party called The Family. The United States of Europe (USE, for short) are a playground for all the bad ideas this century has already come up with (and some of the classics from the last 100 years). Citizens are rated by an arbitrary and mean Social Status system, puberty blockers are mandatory for all but the Elites. All of this is shrouded through a huge media ruse: reality is hidden behind a fully augmented and gamified layer, maintained by an AI implanted at birth and controlled by The Family. Citizens never grow up, just grow older and if they aren't high in social status, they are bled and used for everything they have, most of the time without even realizing it. That veil is lifted for some, and with that comes resistance (or opportunity).

It’s a game that assumes players are open to exploring all kinds of ideas and willing to put some thought into the stories they tell and experienced DMs who want to explore a system that challenges them as well. It is also a satire of a dystopian future that may not yet fall upon us …

How does it play, then?

It features a tried and tested original system that is based on a 3d12 roll versus a difficulty. What of a roll is used depends on the strengths and weaknesses a character has. The basic overview reads like this:

Everything else builds on that. There is a little game in the game for the DM to play where they gather "Pennies" over time and get to spend them to make live more difficult for the players. So the power a DM has fluctuates depending on how they play it and interact with the game.

ORWELL also features extensive tools to create and maintain setting and narratives in a very open and flexible world. It's also lushly illustrated, with over 40 illustrations on roughly 200 pages A5 ... The artist found the setting so inspiring that he went above and beyond to create content for it.

I wrote a session report way back that can give you an idea what that plays like, and you can find it here.

You want to read a bit more about how dystopian this game is, you should check out this post about social engineering in ORWELL.

You'd rather see someone else's take on the game? Check out what my good friend Eric has to say about it over on Methods & Madmen!

With all that, you should have a fair impression of what you are in for, but there's also a free preview of the game, including all the cheat sheets and the character sheet that you can get here. If there are any questions beyond that, feel free to hit me up with a comment. I really like to talk about it, too :)

Support a small publisher!

If you need any more convincing about this, I'd like to add that it'd help and mean a lot. It is rare and precious to get feedback on one's work, but buying a product shws appreciation as well and I see it as an investion into the future more than support of a product (because for that it needs to be read or even played!).

What I mean by that is that seeing my offers/designs/ideas being appreciated motivates me to push harder for the things I'm still working on. Your support means a lot and moves a lot.

If ORWELL doesn't tickle you but you'd like to support us, checking out what we also have to offer goes a long way. Minimus Ludus, for instance, is a great little rpg that goes into very different directions in its design and settings.

All of it is appreciated, as are those who already bought our games.

We hope you'll check out ORWELL!

I'm proud of this little game and I hope it will bring people some of the joy we had playing and play-testing it. Don't get me wrong, I know it is not for everybody (the contents are quite mature, actually), but I really hope it finds its people.

And with that we present the PDF of the revised game, with all the bells and whistles one could imagine (bookmarks! hyperlinks!), in the hopes it expands its reach. It'll cost 10 bucks for now and if you buy the PoD (just ordered the proof, when that's fine, that'll be available again, too), the pdf comes free with that. Those who have already bought it should get a message about how they can claim their free pdf ... if not, get in contact.

Protect your Gamemasters (and don't call it "fudging")

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 15:16:00 +0000

November last year I went to check out X. I had heard lots of promissing things about the changes there, and the possibilities that come with them. Gotta say, I'm not disappointed. Already met a couple of interesting people and had some inspiring conversations. As far as you can have that on X ... if you can't get your point across as an aphorism, you might just as well not try. I like it. Anyway. Last big discussion was about "fudging" and how bad it is. I was on no side in this argument as my take is somewhat different. Thought I'd share my thougts here.

One more thing: using X I was reminded that there isn't only "right" or "wrong" but that there are many valid truths that might not even be compatible, but nonetheless co-exist. Still lots of bullshit, too, but the reminder that we can be right and not agree was welcome.

The first truth about fudging is ...

Every GM worth something is able to pilot a narrative to where they want it to be and without touching the dice. Doing so by "ignoring" die results is something mostly inexperienced GMs will do, and only as a last resort (what kind of last resort will be explored later). The dark truth about this is, then: if your GM wants to do something you'd feel "robbed" about if they'd tell you, they'll have PLENTY of chances to do so before any kind of rolling is involved, even to a degree where you will NEVER be able to get even an idea that it happened.

Because that's the main thing GMs do: they adjust their games towards the outcome they think appropriate. Always has been like that.

Even if they are not happy with a die result, it is easy enough to find ways AROUND a result that shifts a narrative away from what is happening. Attack targets are switched, special abilities ignored, NPCs make "dumb" decisions ... The list goes on and on. Rolled a heavy encounter but the group is in no shape to deal with it? Have them rest first, trigger the encounter then. I could go on.

Admit it, it's a lot ... [source]

But is that already fudging? Some people seem to believe so.

My point is, part of the game is trusting the GM to make the right call most of the time while being able to adjust all elements towards a good game that might go sideways. Most games even explicity state so: the GM is the arbiter of the rules, in ALL ASPECTS. That includes, imo, the dice, and it is not arbitrarily so, or to do "harm" to the players, but to ensure the integrity of the gaming experience.

There are now those who will say that a GM deciding a roll is "wrong" and therefor can be ignored, "fudges" in the sense of the word because the rules used that led to the roll are ignored, and players playing by those rules are, therefor, cheated out of a legit result.

Well, let me tell you a little something about game design, then.

Because games are machines, too ...

... and machines can go wrong, every now and then. What I'm saying is, there is no role-playing game out there that addresses all possible scenarios, including those it was written for. Add adventures and splatbooks and different authors, even lack of playtesting, and you'll get a collection of rules that will fail a group every so often, IF not a GM steps in to adjust towards the intention of the game. Towards its ideal (or gestalt?).

Mostly it is little things that need adjusting. That's an important part of it for ALL role-playing games, because it is important to realize that GMs need to find consistent ways to play a game WAY before they even introduce "house rules". And for a plethora of reasons, too, like when rules are not well written or clear enough in aspects.

The oldest role-playing games we know are great examples of that. We are, to this day, exploring the intricacies of what OD&D means or how it is played. I'd say it is important to find common ground like that, even if it takes decades to get there. That said, role-playing games are little machines used by individual GMs, and both of them need to click to find their unique version of that game, again, towards the ideal the game proposes.

Switch between groups playing the same game, and you'll find those nuances of interpretations even among those who play RAW. In a sense, GMs are necessary elements of games, just like a driver is a crucial part of a car (again with the car analogy ...).

I'm a great proponent of writing rules in a way that allows those using them the same experience they'd have when the designer is GMing it. Actually quite difficult to achieve, believe it or not, and not done often enough. Even if done properly, the amount of playing a new game needs before a GM can achieve mastery of that game, especially if it is more on the "crunchy" side (say, AD&D is a good amount of crunch many would already shun nowadays), is hours upon hours of play-time and preparation.

What it takes, then, is a series of lessions that is bound to be riddled with misunderstandings and mistakes and short term adjustments, just for playing the game while learning it. At some point all playing in a group will be content with how they play the game (or rather, how they interact with the game).

All part of the learning process. [source]

And then you get an errata that changes some of the assumptions you had to work with, or even a new edition that actually expands on the established! What I'm saying is, playing a role-playing game is always a work in progress, even for those who wrote it.

Which begs the question: what game are people playing, then? And where does the "cheating" in this process start? Is it even legitimite to call it "fudging" or "cheating" if one where to look honestly at what GMs are doing?

The second truth about fudging ...

One thing you'll experience on X is that ALL issues end up being argued along a binary of extremes, even if the issue is not easily divided into just two sides. I feel that is the case here, too, because while one side took umbrage in the idea that a GM might adjust die results and called that "fudging" or even "cheating", the other side claimed it is necessary for "the story" to "fudge" occasionally. For instance to save a PC from death.

And all of a sudden, it was "storygamers" versus "role-players" ... or something along those lines. With the problem framed like that, a proper discussion ended up being impossible and what was left was taking sides.

BUT those are NOT true opposites. Although they understand how they play the game very differently and like to fight over how to play "properly". So a fight it was.

Anyway, the thing is that the original game already relied A LOT on people filling the gaps they found. And it was a game full of gaps, which is easily enough proven, since no one group played like the other, so diverse had the different interpretations been (Gygax, arguably, had to write AD&D to have his interpretation of what they had published originally, canonized).

In many cases that made additional rules necessary, in other cases gaps had filled easily with, well, narrative tools. I think the original game was seen as a guideline of what to play, not a set of rules how to play, if that makes any sense. What I mean is, D&D is (was?) an idea of a game for and foremost, and that ideal is ABOVE the rules. The source, if you will.

In a sense we never stopped exploring what that first pitch proposed 50 years ago actually means, as far as rules are concerned as well as all social aspects of it and how all of that interacts.

So the "fudging" both sides are talking about is, more often than not, the clumsy attempt to work towards that ideal. I firmly believe that. And while one side sees more the mechanical aspect of the game as dominant (hence the umbrage), it's the other side that is too far into the narrative aspects of the game to see any issue.

Both sides aim for an ideal of a game that the other side doesn't play while ignoring that both ideals are variants of a more removed, a pure ideal of the game. And they all adjust the rules one way or another down the line, just with different preferences.

In summary I'd say that people often confuse WHAT they are playing (role-playing games) with HOW they are playing (the specific set of rules and customs they are using). The one is a meta, if you will, of what the game can be, the other is an attempt towards that ideal in form of a set of rules. If you GMed more than one game in your life, you know you bring that meta to other games.

The "meta" isn't a moving target ...

All right, I think that last point needs some clarification. What's the "meta" or "ideal" or "gestalt" of role-playing games? And how are those two positions not opposites?! In order to answer both, we'd have to answer what lightning actually was in that bottle that is the original game. That's not as easy to pin down as one would think, and maybe something a game designer may have a very different perspective on than most others would.

First of all, if you see D&D as a cultural phenomenon, you'll find very quickly that while D&D was the focus of the hype, it wasn't really about D&D at all. D&D was the entry point to be part of something that went beyond what people knew about games and gaming. And by a huge margin, too.

Remember, no computers to speak of yet, war games had been the pinnacle of complexity as far as board games went but had also been VERY fringe, and beyond that you got some classics (chess, monopoly and so on) and some simple games and toys. Compared to that, D&D was a quantum leap.

But towards what?

Primarily I see two strong basic tenets, the first big one being EXPLORATION with a hint of danger (the UNKNOWN and CHANCE), the second one being the promise of GROWTH (gathering EXPERIENCE and KNOWLEDGE). There are a couple of secondary tenets as well, mostly things put in place to enhance the primary ones, chief among them would be having a guide, of sorts, that evaluates your progress (the GM) AND a group of mutuals that alternate between witnessing and playing.

A third important aspect attached to the original premise would be that it happens by way of cooperative storytelling (in the most basic sense).

And there you have it, the secret sauce that make rpg tick and spawned several billion dollar industries. A bit of gambling, some school-of-life type of learning and a bit of cooperative campfire storytelling in a structured and controlled small group setting. D&D hit the Zeitgeist right on the nerve with its proposal and it would weave its magic through a complete culture for decades to follow.

It is the "what" I was talking about.

The "how", now, are the different expressions that can have. All play around with the dials outlined above, and we saw several surges of innovation in the last 50 years (how about exploring desires? ... Vampire:TM), as well as some setbacks (arguably corporate culture aiming to make role-playing games costly theme park experiences) and some experiments (games without an element of chance, solo rpgs ...).

All of it is fair game, of course, and all of it helped the hobby to nail that higher ideal, BUT we are not yet done doing so. As a matter of fact, we might not live to see that happen.

Think about Chess, for instance, a game already over 500 of years old (older if you take precursers into account). You know when the last revision of the rules we know had been? 2023.

2023!

So it's STILL discussed what the "true" gestalt of that game is. But Chess can show you another thing, too: at some point a version gained popularity that appeared to be superiour to all other variants. It's a bit of a transfer to imagine the same for rol-playing games in general, but for D&D it is very much possible ... just not yet done.

Because, although it seems to be pretty easy to pin down an agreeable version of the basic rules, scope, best practice and GM advice are very much still a matter of discourse.

That is to say, all those "how to"s capture aspects of the "what", but not entirely so. And that's important to acknowledge, because (and here we go full circle) all honest attempts carry a piece of the truth and are, therefor, not wrong within their confines. Or rather, arguing one case does not negate the other because both might be true.

In that sense, where a GM "adjusts" in a game and to what degree is entirely up to individual compromise. Higher degrees of compromise are usually not possible, but may occur within certain groups of games. A "final truth" or a "one true way" has not yet been found.

It's not "fudging", then?

"Fudging" is, as far as I'm concerned, a misnomer for what it aims to describe in the context of the work a GM does to make the game happen. There are, for sure, examples of bad practice among GMs out there, but I think all can agree that Gamemasters who actually "cheat" (which would be abusing the rules to achieve something that has nothing to do with the game) should NOT GM a game.

Don't abuse the game for ill goals ... [source]

Other than that, all I see is that it is within the broader idea of what a GM can do or should be able to do, sometimes maybe even HAS to do. Experienced GMs will not even bother with the dice but easily work around any result they might get but not like. Beyond that, if players are bothered by it and want to take the dice as they come, well, that's one way of playing it. Just not the way of playing it.

The whole notion of calling it fudging already implies something fishy is done on the sly, so I wouldn't go and apply it to anything a GM does in the game to begin with. A GM should have the best of the group at heart. Always. And people should agree what that means in their game, of course, but the far more important point is that in order to achieve that, GMs have to work with what they get, which is never perfect.

Can't be, for all the reasons summoned above. It also is a tough gig to do on the side AND for free (in general). People seem to forget that, too. So when I hear arguments like "he cheated the character out of their death" or whatever, I think, what an ungrateful piece of shit do you need to be to bring that to a table and denigrate the good work done for you?

Because that's what it is, most of the time, good work and good intentions.

So I think it'd be a good idea to not call anything a GM does "fudging" or "cheating" as long as they are within the realm of doing their "job". You can still diagree with the solutions a GM finds for the problems a game poses, but it is presumptious that someone got robbed of something because of a difference in taste or approach.

Just be kind to people, for fuck sake, especially if they take the time of their day to do something for you.

Just be nice ...

My take?

I roll all of it in the open, most of the time (there are games with mechanics that make it necessary for a GM to withold the result, however). I also don't need to adjust dice rolls, as I think it is a nice challenge to weave results into the game I don't "like". GMs are players, too, you know. But I'm ALSO doing this for over 30 years now, and it was a long road to get to where I'm right now with it.

Unexperienced me, decades ago, in my teens, maybe even early 20s ... I might have taken a liberty or two with the results every now and then. In ALL those cases, swear to god, it was because I thought I saw a better outcome by ignoring a result. It's, imo, all part of the process of getting this role of being a GM done properly and finding your own voice.

You can't tell me there's anything wrong with that.

There's also the somewhat prevalent idea of "role-playing as sports" that NEEDS consistency in the rules to the degree you'd expect with war games or games like Chess. It is problematic, as you can see outlined above (no rpg is THAT well written, to my knowledge), but that would (again) cook down to something a table agrees on, not a general "truth" or a way of playing that'd protect players from the system failing them at the fringes.

Beyond that I see with concern how our perception what the game is shifted a fair bit away from the idea that the GM is the head honcho at their table, undermining their authority constantly, reducing them to being mere entertainers in the long run.

I don't play that way, and I don't write games for people like that, but I see the opinions behind those shifts permeating through all the discussions. But that and "player conduct" (or lack thereof) may be isues for another post.

In the end, if someone plays the game differenty, ask them how they made that work for their group and what's fun about it, instead of going on a crusade. Maybe you'll learn something about how you play and why in the process. Everybody wins that way.

Let's close with my favorite Bob Ross D&D meme, shall we?

Everyone needs a friend ... [source]

-------------------------------------

MINIMUS LUDUS by Mark van Vlack is still new on OBS. It is a very lite rules rpg that comes with EIGHT complete worlds to explore and play around with for one shots or even short campaigns. Check it out if you want to support our work here!

-------------------------------------

I'd like to close this post again with that little mantra I've learned about a couple of weeks ago, Ho'oponopono (a great article about it can be found here). It keeps having a positive impact on my life, and I feel we all need something like this right now (or always, actually), so here you go:

I'm sorry!

Please forgive me.

Thank you.

I love you ...

Introducing Minimus Ludus to the World (also, 500th post!)

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 16:55:00 +0000

Hello, friends and neighbors. I hope the year is treating you fine so far! As it happens, I got busy again and managed to get another little game. This time, another first with my little publishing endeavor, a game not written and designed by me, but by my good friend Mark van Vlack. I did editing and layout, eddy Punk added a couple of scenarios ... but I'm getting ahead of myself. Lets talk about it!

Get it on OBS!

A game, written by a friend

Mark is a well seasoned game designer. He's doing it for years now. Decades, even. And it shows whenever he tackles a new project or revises one of his numerous old games, which seems to happen every other month. Thing is, he doesn't really have any interest in getting them published "properly". The odd pdf or PoD here and there, but all very much the "I needed to have this in some form for my own table, so I might as well share it"-kind of approach.

I love talking games with this guy. Always insightful and seeing something I might have missed in my designs. I think it is fair to say that we inspired each other for several ideas that made their ways into our games here and there. It is that healthy and productive exchange you'd always like to have with your peers.

Anyway, I've been dabbling with this publishing thingy for some time now, and we've talked a couple of times about me publishing some of his. We did come close once, when I edited and layouted his role-playing game Phase Abandon. It is a game you can get for free on OBS right now, if you are interested to find out how this guy ticks. PA is anotehr great game of his I can only recommend. Saw lots of play-testing, too!

Which leads to another thing: his friends love his games. Check out his discord, if you don't believe me.

Anyway, he's a good egg and I'm happy to call him a friend.

Minimus Ludus - All the Worlds, Pocket-Sized!

As for the publishing gig, just the other day he told me that he wrote a very small game for the Bachelor party of one of his friends. The challenge he gave himself was to make it a complete game with no more than 1000 words (I belive ... no more than two pages A5, anyhow). AND HE DID IT!

If you read this blog, you might be aware that I'm not really into lite role-playing games. Or rather, in how they are marketed in our little niche of the hobby. They take shortcuts by assuming an experienced gamemaster, but often don't own up to it, claiming instead it's "how the game was supposed to be played", which is, on the face of it, bullshit. Of course.

But they do have their perks, obviously. For one, they are easily expanded on. Preparation, if you know what you are doing, is easy as fuck. Just a couple of pages to read, ready to go soon after. For big groups, or for people with no huge amount of time to play, right on the money. IF the GM knows what he's doing and all you want to do is small one-shots or very short campaigns.

I saw over the years a couple of games I actually admired for their short and concise approach to role-playing games, Macchiato Monsters being one of them, for instance. There is an art to writing a short rpg that actually works.

Minimus Ludus is such a game, in my opinion.

I'll tell you why, too: The role of the dice in this game is minimal, but not insignificant. It is not so much about how high your roll is (although that factors in, too), but instead about what you can summon as aid to your roll that makes the game click. Those elements you may summon are all narrative in nature, but convey bonuses if applied.

That means, if you play to the elements of the story and setting you are playing in, it does the two-punch of making the setting come alive AND results in a better result. There's also a meta-currency element to it where GM and players can trade story elements.

I really like that (maybe for obvious reasons?). So characters come, for instance, with a weakness and the GM can exploit that, but it costs the GM as well to o so, the benefit for the player being, that they get a Token they can burn later for a benefit ...

Behold the character sheet!

Another aspect I like is how it is conceptualized to be expanded on by the setting you use it for. There is a very abstract but highly functioning core that is easily altered to fit all kinds of settings. There's even a meta story how all those worlds (or "Pockets", how he calls it) connect.

The game came with five settings already written by Mark. When we agreed that this will be the first game of his published under my label, Eddy Punk added three takes of his to the fold.

That's EIGHT SETTINGS out of the gate before you even have to come up with your own (for which the game actually also provides guidelines!). I don't have to tell you: that's a lot of gaming right there, even if you are not into ALL the scenarios.

That's not Star Wars. Not at all.

Lets get lost on an island!

Anyway. We talked about it and agreed, I did editing and layout, and now you can buy Mark and me a coffee by purchasing this on the OBS flavor of your choice.

In return you will get a fun little game that does a lot of heavy lifting with a very light engine. Something you can take for a spin when there's not enough time to play something a bit more complex.

I really like it and I'm happy to have this game as part of my portfolio. And I hope you guys will check it out!

It will bring you some joy, I'm sure of it.

What else is new?

With Minimus Ludus out of the gate, the next big project is the pdf for ORWELL ... It needs a couple of small mistakes taken care of as well as bookmarks and hyperlinks, but then the pdf will be ready for public consumption. The PoD gets a little facelift as well, while we are at it.

While that's happening, I'll keep on writing Angry Little Aliens VERSUS King Arthur. That turned out to be a fun project and it's very well doable in the couple of months ... so I'm confident that it will see the light of day soon!

Other than that? I rediscovered my love for all the small publications out there and want to spend more time with reading what piled up on my desk ... digitally and PoD both. We'll see how far I'll get with that, but if I do so, I will talk about it here on the blog.

Beyond that ... who knows. There's a little game I plan to write for Halloween this year. That has a very high chance of happening. And there is at least one supplement for ORWELL I can see myself tackling this year, most of all because I love the premise of it (read about it here, if you haven't already).

Addendum on Balance: Players Maketh Balance (or do they?)

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 16:45:00 +0000

Alright now, I said a lot about what I believe balance to be and how it is all connected in Part 1, and yet I did not convince my good friend Eric that m argument is sound. Sort of. We talked about it afterwards a bit and it baffled the both of us that we could not agree, since we both (seem to) have almost the same idea of what makes a good game. We've tried, we had the same fun. How come we did not see this one the same. I think I found an answer to that, although that might just be another can of worms to open. Lets take a look.

You want to catch up? Read Part 1 here and follow the bread crumbs.

Something about balance ... [source]

A flawed understanding?

What "balance" is should be the easiest thing to answer. And yet, especially in gaming, there are very different takes on it. But if you take a closer look at the topic, you'll find that while all are talking balance, they seem to do so from very different points of view.

I know for a fact that a GM will have a different understanding of what "balance" means for him than a game designer will have, with a player being the third element in a game that might also have yet another take on it. What I think I managed to establish was that at least those playing a game should be on the same page in that regard, but gaming culture is not so open in its terminology that you could find a difference, never mind an agreement (if it doesn't happen accidentally).

The irony is I thought I had understood one of the basic aspects about the whole affair, and yet, it did not even translate to someone like-minded. How can we have so different understandings of balance that we cannot even talk about it? Anyway, we kept talking and it went back and forth a while. Then it hit me: what we are talking are two different understandings of balance, all right. Mine was that a game needs to be balanced to work properly, Eric's was that he did not like it when the game was balanced towards the players, giving them an even challenge every time.

I do not like that either. We still disagreed, since he assumed that me talking balanced design meant that part was included ... or even the sole purpose of balanced design.

Really not. Not in my opinion. But how to explain that? What is the fucking difference between a balanced game and a game skewed towards the players? It hit me then that the balance Eric criticized (rightfully so) was a flawed yet popular understanding of "balance". Basically the idea that we need to play our games in tourist mode.

Let me explain that.

Morrowind versus Oblivion

This is what it comes down to: my understanding of what "balance" means in a game is best explained with what Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind does. The sandbox is balanced and filled with encounters that range all across the spectrum, from very easy to very hard. Quests are mixed in, traveling is an adventure (but there are shortcuts). As a player you have to find a way to make that balance work in your favor.

The balance players in Morrowind are striving for is the one they can force on the game.

If you are clever and crafty you can create all kinds of shortcuts and tricks to beat tougher challenges then your level would suggest. I once robbed a powerful elemental blind just by being sneaky and patient. Took a couple of reloads, but I looted that mine he had protected somewhat fierce, gaining material I shouldn't have access to at that point. Ha! It was the kind of fun I'm looking for in a game. Still do.

Best CRPG. Ever. [source]

You'd die more often, especially when encountering something tough you haven't seen before. But that was all part of the fun, all part of the learning process needed to beat the game. All part of the challenge.

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, on the other hand, came out a couple of years later and is also regarded a classic of the genre. Supposed to be great combat, even better storytelling, huge sandbox. And yet, I never touched that game, because the first thing that went public about it was that encounters scale towards the player, like, all the time.

That seemed wrong to me.

Because it doesn't matter what you do or where you go, everything that opposes you will be your level. Even the end boss, for that matter! If you puny level one character knows where to go and where to find a sword on the way there, he can go right up to the big end boss and beat up his level one ass ... But you could also play hours and hours of the game, fights being even as they are while you are getting more and more powerful. Better equipment, better weapons and spells. The dressing changes, but you are going through the motions.

No surprises, no real challenges, just be what you can be on a level, and beat what is opposing you. For at least roughly 30 hours if you do it to have it all touched, but for as much as 184 hours (or so the internet says).

Either way, seems to me like a HUGE waste of time.

Oblivion: a waste of time? [source]

It is something I see in computer games more and more often nowadays, the time you can waste in those games just to grind levels, or even to go from a to b and harvest and loot all the way through ... you could spend hours driving through Vice City in GTA V, no problem. The game would even throw you a bone every now and then to show that you are "progressing" somehow.

Blech.

Anyway, there you have it:

The skewed understanding of balance is to make the players part of that balance instead of challenging them to find and make that balance themselves.

This is neither good nor bad game design, it is dark game design. Ask yourself which games you've played that do this to you. If you ever felt like you've wasted your life playing a game, then it'll most likely be because the game offered no challenge while you went through the motions of playing it. Maybe you experienced a good story, and made you gained some levels, but in the end it is an empty accomplishment.

I get that there are people out there liking games like that. Oblivion certainly has its fans. I don't have to agree with that, and if you have fun playing games like that, more power to you.

But don't tell me that those games are "balanced" in a sense that makes a game a game. It might be balanced in the sense a theme park experience is balanced. Keeps you busy enough with the illusion of doing something. Like a joyride ... being completely safe, but you can easily and safely act as if it was dangerous until it is over.

It might even be fun, but it is very much its own thing, very different to the original understanding of what ttrpg or even computer games are. Which is easily enough seen when looking at modules and the like, because they basically do what Morrowind does: that dragon you encounter will not end up being level 2 just because you are. It will tear you a new one if you go at it weak.

As it should.

With games like D&D you'd have to be strategic and clever. You'd have to work together and there always had been that aspect to overcome the game and, to some extent, the GM, because that was what made the game so much FUN.

Player skill is what that was called. That's why those games needed to be balanced. Because how else could the players learn from playing how to overcome the game? If the output a system has is unreliable, you can not reliably plan what to do ... which is where the game ends. Players will never have agency with an imbalanced game.

Just as they don't have agency when playing Oblivion.

So, Oblivion is imbalanced?

I would say that balance in gaming should be an active endeavor, something to aim for in all aspects of the game. When you are level 1, you try and test and see what you can get away with, and you continue to do so throughout the game. From the player side of the equation balance seems to be, as far as I can say, the flow of progressing with every challenge towards growth through gauging what can be achieved within the game.

You know how it works. [source]

They are autonomous agents within the system, free to roam within its rules (free to fail, too). Take that away (because you do take it away if every challenge is symmetrically adjusted towards a group's power level), and you are left with what exactly? Telling stories, basically.

So in that sense Oblivion, and the many, many games that follow the same design principles, many of them being ttrpg as well, reduce you to being a consumer with some stage directions how to play along. Your achievement will be that you played an elf in Oblivion for 150 hours to see the stories the game tells you.

Because you have not created a story yourself, obviously, since all you did was invest enough time into the game to see it through. There is a passive balance to it, if you want to use the term, but as I said in Part 1: be careful about the balance you chose.

We might have a problem here ...

I'll keep it short today, but the points made above hint at a bigger problem. Of course people will say it is balance if the player is part of the balance without his own doing. And there are many, many popular games that use that kind of design. It has its audience, too.

But what they are talking about is CONVENIENCE, not BALANCE, and the difference should be obvious even to a casual observer. Behind the two are different design goals, mostly resulting in very different games with very different people attached to them.

That is to say that there is meaning in this difference.

So I get now where Eric is coming from. We basically agree, but talk about it differently. When he says, he likes when modules keep it "imbalanced", what he's talking about is that players should be able to figure it out. They create balance by interacting with the game, and that balance is a smooth progress forward by overcoming the challenges the game throws at them every which way possible.

I'm saying the same, but following the above reasoning, I might add that what he's criticizing as "Encounter Balance" is not "balance" at all, it is false symmetry. A railroad of the mind, if you will. Because any progress is meaningless that comes from following the path someone else made for you.

I'll try something different now and quote someone else how crucial balance is (the whole, very much recommended, essay about balance in video games can be found here):

Know that imbalance is actually bad. The first thing that I think everyone has to do is to internalize the idea that balance is good, and imbalance is bad. I've actually heard people try to argue that a little bit of imbalance is necessary for a fun game. Not only do I disagree, but I think that they don't even really believe that. (Keith Burgun)

Lets leave it at that. I'll take care that all the rules I'm publishing will have a proper definition of how balance works within the context of the game and what to look for. Because it is important that GMs get the difference and see what works how. Not only to run the games I published, but also to be able to see what else is out there and how to categorize that.

And if you after all that still believe that Encounter Balance is a myth, I don't know what to tell you. If you mean Encounter Balance is talking about making encounters as strong as the group, or even weaker to have them win all the fights, let me tell you: you are not talking "balance". From a game design perspective, Encounter Balance simply means that encounters within a system should follow the principles used in that system. Because if they don't, it'll break the game.

Thanks for reading all of that. Buy my shit :D

And now ...

[source]

Joking. There is no one here ...

Would you play that? Part 3 (Introducing: The ORWELL USA Sourcebook)

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 13:52:00 +0000

Happy New Year, friends and neighbors! Thought I'd start that year productive and add to the projects I have in the air right now ... It is not a new idea per se, as a lot was already established in the base game. Since ORWELL plays completely in the USE (United States of Europe, of course), I felt obligated to give some hints what the rest of the world looks like. For the USA, I wrote:

"United States of America. The USA turned into a toxic wasteland in the 2030s when AI interference caused all active atomic warheads to detonate. Most of them were underground, but still, the effect on people and the environment was devastating, leading to civil unrest and hasty mass migration. Some stayed back in the ruins, but it’s wild land now. No one knows what’s going on there. The wall to the south is now maintained by the Americans that usurped South America, and Canada built its own wall to protect its citizens from the radioactive wasteland."

It'll be our starting point for this here setting. I might have to alter the text above a bit for the pdf and the revision, since my mind took that premise and went a bit wild with it. I'll show you ...

If you want to check out Parts 1 and 2 first, you can read about Legacy of Gyrthwolden here and Angry Little Aliens vs. King Arthur here. Angry Little Aliens actually will see some play-testing soon. That thing is almost done. For real!

What happened to the USA in the ORWELL universe?

PITCH: I imagine this to be a mix between STALKER, Fallout, Westworld and Borderlands, with as much of the computer logic as possible translating into the game to make it an action heavy fever dream of sandbox exploration and excessive firefights. And some rpg in the mix, of course. That's what ORWELL is for, after all.

What would that look like?

The USA is in a perpetual state of cold civil war with a government captured by big corporations. Some hacker programs and releases an AI to end it all out of spite or as one final troll. No one knows for sure, as things got out of hand so fast that it got hard to trace this back to its source.

That AI, then, prepares and then releases a controlled explosion of all nuclear warheads stationed on US soil. It basically breaks the tectonic plates controlled in a way that floods Texas as the oceans connect and has it break away from Canada in the north (leaving Alaska as the unimportant rest of the USA). Everything in between is shattered. The sound that made was like the trumpet of god ...

But the AI knew exactly what would break and what wouldn't, so just minutes from starting the sequence, thousands of dubious packages had been delivered to specific coordinates all over the country: highly capable and durable 3d printers. Those printers were engineered towards repopulating the US after the image of the memelord that programed the AI and through data stored on pirate satellites.

However, this did not go unnoticed and world governments did what they could to do something against it. And that's how the first (and last?) AI war in history started. It lasted all of 346 seconds. No one knows exactly what went down, but it is assumed that it destroyed that rogue AI before it was done with what it was doing. That day all those pirate satellites fell from the sky and landed all over the US, but for some reason only there.

The death toll had been immense. Roughly 80% of the population did not survive the initial catastrophe, half of what remained made it out of the country. Given that some had prepared for something like this, it can be assumed that some survived in fallout shelters, hiding to this day. There are rumors out there that "original prints" are not harmed by the nano recyclers.

When the dust had settled, those printers still started printing, but they printed horrors no one of sane mind would assume it intended to print. Instead, it populated the US with monsters and mad humans, dangerous and armed to the teeth. And they would not die, as every time one would get killed, they'd be printed again a couple of days later. Immortal and impotent insanity. Yet somehow they clustered and formed tribes, some even in a grotesque imitation of what life had been before the incident.

Beasties gonna be weird ...

Turned out that those tribes formed around data snippets the AI had produced in a hurry and hidden all over the country, mostly as very strange and alien artifacts scientists don't yet fully understand. That's where the characters come in. Mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, all of them Data Hunters. Or, as they like to call themselves, RetSpecs, derived from the corporate term Retrieval Specialists. "Rets" is an even shorter moniker floating out there.

No one knows how the AI managed to print life as it does, and finding that out has IMMENSE value. So there are corporate across the US (Hawaii being the biggest) that help RetSpecs get in and out of there with all the data treasures they can find. When they enter, they have to get some of the print scheme entered into their DNA, a protection needed to fool the nano clouds all of the US is steeped in now. Those same clouds that allow for all of the fauna, some of the flora and all of the weaponry to reprint, turn out to be extremely hostile towards alien bodies while remaining extremely local ... yet another field of research that needs brave souls to get some samples out there.

Just so you guys can fathom what had happened here: the world almost experienced a singularity event. The AI developed so fast and so complex a pattern that it reshaped the biggest part of an entire continent within weeks. What remains of the USA is not only a toxic wasteland full of dangerous creatures and humans, it also demands very difficult technological solutions to navigate all that. But it full of artifacts that are very alien in their nature (all created by the rogue AI, a very superior intelligence) and extremely valuable ... if they can be extracted.

The people willing to brave this New Frontier have to be altered to a point where they are barely human. While keeping (some of) their sanity, they still enter that immortal and impotent reprinting cycle, with the only cure, the only way back to the rest of the world, being something they would have to FIND first in a giant puzzle strewn all across US soil.

Still, many will try. Not only for the promise of immense riches, but also for the raw power fantasy of endless fighting with an unlimited variety of tech and weapons to main and kill and the promise to get right back to that if you die ... a nano fueled Valhalla fantasy, so to say

Because with everything being printable, what will constantly happen is that RetSpecs find new, better weapons than they had, with some really epic premium content added to the mix. As a matter of fact, all equipment is in a state of flux all the time (which is why ORWELL fits so well for this). It's the reason how historians know that it must have been a memelord with gamer sensibilities, as all of it is reminiscent of games from the early 21st century ...

Therefore, as far as we can know, here is what happened: A memelord killed the USA out of spite he did not understand through an AI that did not know what it was doing, fighting against other AI no one was able to control in a world that was, at the time, truly lost.

And the characters are the RetSpecs braving this wilderness, this new frontier for its challenges and riches. The killing sprees are a bonus. A cyberpunk wild west scenario, if you will. Add corporate mining operations and fleeting alliances to this, and you got a game going.

And that's the base line for the ORWELL USA Sourcebook.

Some design notes ...

When the base game of ORWELL is Peter Pan in a brutal dystopian future played as an anime series, this will be closer to a First Person Shooter experience within a sandbox of combat areas, some missions, lots of gaming tropes and boat loads of violence.

The basic rules established for ORWELL stay as they are, but the DM rules will need an overhaul of sorts. This will be more focused on sandbox play and combat might need to get away from the cinematic and more towards something grittier.

But other than that, it'll need only some changes in gaming terms and this is ready to go. "Gender" will be replaced by "Affinity", which will track how well characters assimilate to those alien surroundings. And everyone will have anger issues. for sure. Maybe something in the air that will have people accumulate Anger on the regular, to make it all that much more unhinged!

Would you play that?

To me, all of the above sounds like a fun premise. If I can make this work (and why shouldn't I), this sounds like fun times in my ears.

But would you play that? What would you expect from a setting like that? What would a campaign in this setting look like for you?

----------------------------------------------

Almost all my shit on drivethrugh is on the cheap right now, this being the time of the year for it, so check it out. If you want to do me a huge service, think about getting Monkey Business, as that only needs two more sales to make copper!

Cheers and all the best for 2024!

Revisiting Balance in Game Design (in which I ramble a bit ... you have been warned)

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 08:31:00 +0000

Balance, that old chestnut. People with opinions talking gaming seem to think it ain't necessary, because "player agency" solves all that, or that encounter balance is a myth, something that cannot be achieved so it needn't be tried ... I get it. If all you do is DMing games, you'd have to realize at some point that a Gamemaster is one key element to achieving balance in a game. And yes, it is a multi-faceted problem. Just doesn't mean it can't be solved. Lets talk about it once more ...

This is following up a discussion I had with my good friend Eric (of Methods & Madmen fame) on X, where I'm also at now (find me! follow me! hehe). It was his idea to change medium and write posts about it, too. Read his take here. I have also talked plenty about this with my good friend Mark, and he pointed me towards this nice little nugget of his about balance in a game he wrote. You can read that here.

Over the years I've taken several stabs at the project, and as I got more and more serious about designing my own games, my perspective somewhat shifted. One of my early takes on this (2014!) can be read here. Spoiler: I'm a bit further down the road right now, so I might not even fully agree with what I wrote back then, but clever young me already took that into account and left open what he couldn't know. Ha!

[source]

Anyway. This one will be a bit all over the place. You'll find this examined through all kinds of lenses, as the discussion was all over the place as well.

Preamble

Balance is everything, and everything is balance. Anything that goes against that simple truth will produce some disharmony, if you are lucky, disaster, if you are not so lucky. So purely on the face of it, it is ridiculous to assume that games don't need to be balanced one way or another.

Assuming so, then, needs to come from some skewed understanding what is happening in game design, or what it means to play a game. Something different to what the original games offered. A paradigm shift of sorts.

I think I have a grasp on what is happening and why. It took a while and some discussion, but in the end it was right there in front of me. As usual it is there to be seen, but you have to look. Now I have to find a way to actually explain this in a way that gives others the chance to gain that same understanding.

I'll say it up front: this is no joke. We have been way too lax with how we talk and write games, what game design really means. And in the end (not "the end" end, but where we are at nonetheless), it fucked up what little gaming culture we had. what we are seeing now is the corpse of our hobby looted.

You think this is hyperbole? Keep reading ...

[source]

Where we come from, where we are ...

I'll keep this one short. It will just be a reminder what was offered in the beginning and how that changed. It will be important to understand where I come from when I talk "balance".

Out of several different attempts to make role-playing games happen, D&D was the one that stuck, that actually produced a hype that not only carried itself quite well, but also inspired a wave of innovations in this new hobby that still needs proper reviewing.

What was the essence of that game? What was able to catch the inspiration of so many gamers all over the world? We know today that it wasn't just the rules, it also was the "zeitgeist" back in the early seventies. What the sixties sowed had been in full swing in the 70s, and it showed. The books people read, the movies that went along with it ... very fertile ground for something like role-playing games.

People had been ready to experience the stories themselves they had seen or heard and read about. I think it is hard to grasp what it actually meant to grow up in that time. For one, computer games hadn't been a thing. Board games hadn't been that big yet, either. If you really were into "gaming" and lived in the USA, it would have been in one of the war gaming clubs. A very fringe group of individuals, and ground zero for role-playing games.

Nerds! [source]

So the hobby takes off and innovates up to the 90s like crazy. Hundreds and thousands of games come into existence. the hobby is broad enough at that point so that there is a general agreement on what it means to play the game, but yet no proper research. No one is looking, everyone is doing. Basically. Some forums here and there discussed aspects of the big picture, but it was all very much wild west.

The only way to find out if a game designer back then understood what they were doing, usually was publishing it and seeing if it worked or not (simplified, of course).

The end of TSR in a way marks the end of that momentum as well, even for the competition. Hasbro buying WotC (because of M:tG) then killed it for good and fully made it a corporate endeavor.

Then the revisioning started for good, and the strongest for that first game: D&D. 3e did what 3e did, but people wanted to keep playing that original game, so all the retro clones and blogs happened ... and ended up being successful.

4e failed, 5e tried to play catch up with a crowd that would rather play the old games. That worked a bit, but all the while another movement gained momentum out of the retroclone scene many associate with the moniker "OSR": minimalist games really started taking off.

Basically, we ended up with three distinct kinds of games. The "old" games that started it, including those designed in that tradition. The minimalist games, that basically take the core assumption of the old games, add a concept to that and assume that those playing know what they have to do. And finally, the corporate vision of role-playing games, that would rather have the game being a theme park, of sorts, where you pay and pay and pay to participate.

That's the way I cut it, and those three distinctions are crucial for the argument I make.

The Basic Tenets of RPG Game Design

Role-playing games are, despite their war gaming roots, first and foremost about NEGOTIATION. You talk about what's happening until a disagreement makes it necessary to consult the tools the game offers until the problem is resolved.

Ongoing negotiations ... [source]

Those tools exist along a hierarchy, with the basically talking being the lowest, and the most complex tools being the highest spot in that hierarchy of negotiations. I go into detail about this in the GM section of be67 when talking encounters (following the paradigm established by the D&D RC). It goes like this:

Other than seeing Encounters as elements that form a cohesive narrative, they also need to be seen as interactive elements. As such, they will have several degrees of possible interaction. They are, ordered hierarchically (from easiest to most difficult):
Superficial – Can be negotiated without the use of dice.
Passive – Can be overcome with a Save.
Resource based – Can be overcome, but it costs.
Active, Attribute based – Can be overcome with active use of Attributes.
Active, Skill based – Needs specific Skills to be overcome.
Combat – High resolution challenge triggering some or all the resources.

All elements can be combined, of course, and it should be possible to cleverly negotiate encounters towards a lower hierarchy solution in almost all cases. Instead of fighting, Characters could use Skills, instead of Skills, they could argue the use of Attributes or spend some resources they got available. Arguing Saves would be possible, if it is imaginable that a challenge could be overcome instinctively, and arguing down to “superficial” would render the challenge harmless because Players could talk their way around it. The Gamemaster needs to entertain the argument first, however, and has the last word in all things.

This holds true through all sorts of designs (hence "basic tenets"). You can add to this, or leave stuff out, but along these lines game design happens as soon as talking won't bring the narrative forward.

In a sense, and this is important to understand, the design starts where the negotiation ends. Or rather: the rules of a game EXPAND on language towards the narrative the game intents.

This is, then, where you decide how a game should play. The vision. But what makes a game?

Definition Time & Some Analogy

At this point we can start talking balance, then. We'll start with the analogy and go from there:

The relation between gaming system and GM is the same as between a car and a professional driver. Ideally, both compliment each other to completion, which means, if both work as they should, you get the best possible result. It also means that one balances the other. A good driver will easily tell what problems a car has and what changes need to be made, a good car is designed to accommodate a driver as good as possible.

So for one, a gamemaster needs to know systems like a professional driver needs to know cars. That may come with individual tastes and biases (and will produce new problems I'll address further down), but the more you know, the more you'll appreciate how a game is done before positioning yourself towards it (incidentally how you recognize a good reviewer as well).

By that same token, games need to be designed properly to elevate the performance of a good GM. If all a GM is doing is reduced to compensating for a lacking system, you might still have a game, just not as good as it could have been.

Proper design, therefore, needs to establish standards that new games can build on, just like cars developed standards and still evolve to this day.

In game design, that standard should be (as far as I'm concerned) that someone buying a game can expect to gain the same experience from it as the designer was able to conjure when testing it if playing it by the book. This is no small feat to begin with, to be fair, because it means that the designer must have done extensive testing to present the game in a way that takes all possible uses into account (as far as that's possible).

The only way to assure that is to have the engine of a game BALANCED to the extent that it actually takes some punishment before producing false results.

See it like this: a guy has a vision for a game. It is supposed to do xyz when playing it. That means, it needs to produce results to that effect on all levels of resolution. It is the "first principle" of the game. The base line. Now, when testing reveals a problem where, say, leveling breaks or classes aren't progressing properly or combat produces undesirable effects, or a plethora of other problems that could occur when designing a game, a designer would look at the problem and adjust the system towards the established first principle.

Doing so throughout will produce a BALANCED SYSTEM within the parameters established in the beginning. Which means, as a matter of fact, that there is a metric by which encounters are balanced within the system. It is the equivalent to having a sports car do the things a sports car does.

He's saying something about speed ... [source]

So what does "balance" mean, then? Well, chess, for instance, is balanced. Other than who starts, everyone has the same rules and moves. You play two games and switch who starts between the two of you, and it is the same for both.

The balance is in the symmetry of the game, as well as in how the single elements within the game move and interact. Making that happen is the act of designing a game. "Fairness" is not in the opponent you get, but in the fact that all have the same chance to reach the goals the game sets. finding an individual way to make that work is up to the player.

There you go, game design 101. You decide what your game wants to do, then you engineer it towards that goal anyway you can, balancing all elements towards the vision you have for the game. If you manage to make all that manifest, you have a balanced game on hand.

Balance is unnecessary?

Why aren't there proper distinctions and definitions? Or how come that balance is deemed unnecessary in role-playing games? The answer to both would be that gaming is part of our culture to an extent that general assumptions of what that entails interferes with a need to have a distinction to begin with.

We are expected to know games. At least the general principle of what "gaming" is. We are also expected to accept that while there are general distinctions between categories of games, our only purpose is to know what we like so that we can go and consume that. In other words, you don't need to know how a car is built to drive one. Or even enjoy driving one.

So on the customer side, we only learn to look for the signs of what we think we like, not how that is achieved or, necessarily, how something actually aligns with what we could, would or even need to enjoy. There is a huge wiggle room where selling and buying the illusion of what we want is absolutely fair game. That would be consuming for the IDEA of doing something, with no intention of actually doing so.

I have bought enough games to know exactly what that means. And I have bought games because I liked their presentation, not really thinking about actually ever playing them. Or pdfs, because of an appealing idea and some nice cover art. Guilty as charged, on all those points. Which is why there is a market for it, which also is why that market is over-saturated but, for lack of a better word, flat.

That said, make no mistake, producing artifacts that superficially manage to summon the air of being a role-playing game is not the same as actually writing a role-playing game. There might be overlap, for sure, but to satisfy the market of the former is far easier than doing so for the latter.

That same wiggle room also produces another problem: it results in a faulty understanding of what playing a role-playing game actually entails. It skews our meta-knowledge of this niche of gaming towards an idea of entertainment more akin to going to a theme park.

At this point we are back at the distinction made in the beginning, those three different approaches we call "role-playing games" without distinction. Following the original paradigm will lead to a different understanding of what the game needs than following that of a minimalist game. And corporate has its very own idea what it wants of a gamer (basically WotC wants for the game what Adobe does for its apps).

With all three having very different approaches and need for their designs (again, with overlap), there will be confusion about what a game needs if the distinctions aren't clear.

Coming from a faulty premise like that will make it impossible to evaluate the requirements of a good game from a customer perspective, even if you end up playing a lot of games that spawned in that dreaded wiggle room. The idea of "balance" would not even occur to you, as it is not needed for the kind of games that don't need it. You agree at the table what you want to experience, and then you experience that. The rules are more about engaging socially and how to behave. More LARP or improv theater than D&D.

Still my favorite LARP pic ... [source]

What's more, the "balance" those minimalist or corporate games need is not necessarily anchored in the system, but outsourced to the participants (although with a different focus for each). That hierarchy I've talked about above doesn't track with those games.

Minimalist games, arguably, reduce the game to mostly the negotiation part. That has to mean that those mean rely on a proper "social contract" between the participants to make it work. That can be through having an experienced GM bringing their "meta understanding" of what constitutes a game to the table, compensating for the lack. It can be some form of ideology, that will force the experience through the same lens for everyone.

The corporate approach would be to gear the experience towards being a theme park. In that, you'll have always fun and never struggle and own nothing of the game and be happy (to know is to know). The first thing to castrate for that is the GM as well as the authority of the game itself.

Also seems to work well with ideology, as politics try to determine who is allowed to play and who isn't. Social engineering replacing the system, fucking up that nice hierarchy I shared above simply by giving a "get out of jail card" for all levels of resolution.

But all of it is, in its own way, a form of balance. Otherwise you couldn't play.

But people play games how they want to play them!

The one thing a game designer should ignore is how people are NOT playing their game as published but go their own way with it. If a game is designed as described above and playing it really does what the designer intended, then those playing it differently do so at their own peril. If the game is not at fault (and it might be, but if ...), then the gamer is. Limits of control and all that.

I mean, there is value in learning that a huge variety of people ignore a rule or use it differently. Something like that should be considered for revision, naturally. But if someone, say, uses a horror game to play a superhero campaign, the designer is not at fault.

But that's not even what I'm hinting at.

There is a whole movement in the ttrpg community to see systems as a mere trappings for their individual expression of the story they had in mind. Systems doing their jobs will then be seen as intrusive, disruptive even. And since that's a market, it's easy enough to find content creators (not game designers, mind you) accommodating that need.

That is all fair game, of course, but all the same something different to playing a proper role-playing game. Not even denigrating here. If you find enjoyment in playing something akin to what heavily scripted you tube theater groups call "playing a role-playing game", feel free to do so. It's just very different to what role-playing games had been originally and should be regarded as such.

Same goes for lite rules/minimalist games. Of course there is a beauty to keeping it nice and succinct, and of course is there the possibility that they will offer a proper gaming experience. Just not without an experienced gamemaster, who'd have to invest a whole lot of work to make a game with few rules worth playing for a campaign, if it's possible at all. Or without external forces (as in "not part of the rules") that engineer cohesion into a group.

It's all just different. You wouldn't take a Trabi to a Formula One race, is all I'm saying.

Unless it's pimped? [source]

In all cases, first principles apply: if you write a game with improvised theater in mind, maybe even for Twitch streaming or what have you, it will bring different necessities than writing a proper role-playing game that group of friends can play for decades without getting bored of it, or even writing something that's just supposed to last for a couple of sessions.

That all of this has its place does not mean that one form of design replaces the other. It is, rather, to be treated differently. That's not always easy, it seems.

Why bother, then?

To keep with the analogy, if you shift gears in a car to the next tier, you expect that car to behave like a car that has been shifted one up (ideally, going faster then before). How you react to the car performing is directly related to the feedback it gives. The same goes for players in a game. They'll try and test, maybe even read the rules, to get an idea how a game behaves and act accordingly. System mastery is, to use another buzzword, giving them "agency" over their characters.

If a system, now, produces unreliable results, their performance will be geared towards balancing and compensating the problems the system is producing themselves. Same goes for the GM, of course. They might even work together to address the shortcomings and find compromises to solve them.

It is, naturally, something the designer should have done to begin with to present a "complete" game. And if all of that produces more hustle than playing the game is worth, people will move on and play something else.

So this is why designers should bother with offering games that work properly, which means, they are balanced in a way that reliable results allow for all involved to have an enjoyable experience when engaging with the game. And those things will get apparent over time, of course, so even if a game is successful for, say, the sheer marketing power of its publisher, it will fall short sooner or later when people find out what a game is lacking.

D&D 3e, for instance, broke when characters reached mid to high level. The work load for the GM just got too big too handle, plus, the system did not take into account how powerful characters impact a setting and so on and so forth (I hear 5e has some of the same problems, actually).

50 years into the hobby, examples are legion. But so are examples of good design. It just seems that people have a hard time accepting standards and building on them. Ignoring them, however, doesn't mean you'll get away with something subpar, because gamers will notice sooner or later. They always do.

Another important point why game designers should bother is that leaving the task to make a game work to a gamemaster is unfair to begin with and also introduces so many additional variants to playing the game that the outcome of playing the game is random at best, futile for all involved in its worse manifestations. Because you can't know who is running the game, how experienced, which tastes and biases. It is why the first principles discussed above are so crucial. It is why balance is crucial.

[source]

Which is, ultimately, why people find ways to argue that it wasn't needed to begin with. Or that it's okay as long as all follow the same ideology. Or that it can be known what a rpg is and therefor will sort itself out at the table. It is why those three distinct groups exist and fight for dominance.

My bias is towards writing games as complete as possible, following the design principles outlined above. I think it has value to do so and that it is important to see other games for what they are: different.

To close with the analogy: give a good car to a mediocre driver, and you'll get a good performance out of it. Give that same driver a bad car and you open the result up to such a huge variance of failure, that everything between "passable" and "disaster" could be the outcome. A good car avoids that, as does a good game. Both car and game will follow or even develop standards and need to be engineered towards producing reliable output throughout.

And that's why you bother.

Conclusion

This will be a long one no reads or bothers thinking about. Yet, I stand by the above. We need proper definitions for what's happening around us, if only to recognize what has been done, what can be done and even how to do something else. It is also to save what is left of gaming culture, I assume.

All of this is already happening, but of course some people have a vested interest in keeping it foggy, unexplained and vague. Because then you can claim "this is how it's supposed to be played" or that something that isn't, is a natural evolution of a design (as, say, AD&D 2e to D&D 3e ... rather a neutering than an evolution, I'd say). People earn money or just street cred by keeping things just as they are.

Not an evolution ... [source]

That is a problem.

Not that I have anything against them doing so, but y being honest about what a game can do, maybe even MUST do to fulfill certain criteria, it might end up appealing to far less people. What happens to D&D now regarding rewrites and 6e is a very good example for what I'm talking about here.

What's worse, the fact that the gaming community is split across political and ideological lines is very much due to the fact that lots of rules don't care to create an experience SO COMPLETE that those things don't matter. Or the other way around, if all you argue is rules for that years long campaign you are in, then the game did you a service. Once a game leave too much room for interpretation, those spaces are filled with all kinds of nasty surprises instead, like what the publisher wants you to do, think or buy. Or that political/religious/ideological bullshit someone wants to push down your throat.

So we need definitions, we need to be clear about what game does what service for what audience. And we need to understand that balance is a very real aspect of games, but the kind of balance you chose has a HUGE impact on your gaming experience. And some of that has NOTHING to do with the original idea of what role-playing games are.

If you are like me, you'd want that hustle on the system side of the game, not anywhere else.

----------------------------------------------

Cheers and all the best for the next year!

Would you play that, too? (Introducing Angry Little Aliens vs. King Arthur)

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 08:36:00 +0000

When my good friend Mark asked me for inspirations for a new setting, I went a bit crazy about it. The result had been four proper settings I'd really like to play (or make a game out of) myself. But won't for a long time, I guess. So I thought I'd share them here with some ideas about the design I'd go for. I had shared one of those already last month (see here). This is the second, very different take ...

Pitch: Aliens strand on medieval earth, King Arthur's times and try to get off planet asap. However, King Arthur has nicked the mothership and they have no immediate way to get it back. Instead they have to collect the resources and bide their time until they are ready.

Excalibur...

Players will play groups of angry little aliens that will try at every turn to spoil the Arthurian legends. Kill the knights or sabotage their quests, trick Merlin into giving bad advice while getting ready for REVENGE! But the aliens are really small, die easily and lack resources, so all of it is a challenge. Should be light-hearted fun of evil mischief with a lite-rules system. This is:

Angry Alien vs. King Arthur

Log Book Entry 12.5k9 (by R4k1 Z)

Imagine that: you travel through multidimensional space and some IDIOT manages to park your ride in a stone substance on a primitive linear planet. Then some other IDIOT, an ugly warty hairy inbred from that dirt ball of a planet, somehow claims ownership of the mothership by touching it and merging his dirty DNA with it, using it to club things ever since. Made it a whole enterprise, fooling everyone around him to think he's a bigshot. Won't give it back, too.

We should OBLITERATE THE FOOL. Problem is, the escape algorithm was somehow fucked as well, and we ended up being too big to reclaim the ship, but way too small to conquer this reality.

Argh! To be surrounded by idiots!

Then yet another fool appears, alien to this planet as well, running his own scheme with the crowd here. Says he's a diplomat and will help us if we do his bidding. Slaves we are now! The insolence! Yet we cannot deny him and must play along with his stupid "wizardry". But the name Merlin will be cursed for generations to come, be sure of that.

So we are stranded here, planning our revenge. No resources, with ridiculously short life spans and everything here tries to eat us or breed us. But we will NOT surrender to this fate! We will persevere and they will know our WRATH! Eventually ...

----------------

Design ideas

This should be a quick and silly game with light rules, I'd say. Beer 'n Bretzels all the way. The "enemy" (King Arthur's court) should be full of dubious and funny characters the group can interact with. Something like this:

KING ARTHUR - The bigwig. He's the worst, stealing the mothership and all, making dents into it, too! There is no easy way to get to him directly, as he merged with the mothership and its AI protects him. Until we have the resources needed to hack our way back into the ship, we'll have to sabotage everyone around him instead! Maybe we can get him when he's lonely and weak ...

MERLIN - Big alien bastard. Has his own racket running on the planet. Maybe he had sabotaged our landing! One can only speculate. He knows about us and acts as if he's a liaison between us and what they call the "court". Bullshit, we say. Calls us "fairies" for some reason. For now we do as he tells us, but if we can subvert and undermine his plans and machinations, we sure as Slob will do so!

SIR LANCELOT - Best buddy of this Arthur guy. He is gullible as a Glblygith AND lusts for the King's female bitch. Lots to work with and he gets the most favorable quests, too. Good opportunities to make ALL OF THEM look bad.

SIR GAWAIN -They call him "the perfect knight, but he is not the sharpest kltrad in the shtiff. Well hung, too, it seems. Unfortunately very loyal, however. And he is capable, we must admit. Very much a worthy target when engaged in moonless nights. Would be a good ploy to make him hate another knight.

SIR GALAHAD - Bastard son of Lancelot. Doesn't touch the females, it seems, and can be quite stubborn about not giving up. Set on the right path, he could unknowingly become a devastating force for the cause as he won't stop running in the wrong direction, too, as long as he believes in the purity of the quest. [Galahad appears later in a campaign and his conception should be a quest where the Aliens help Lady Elaine to bed the guy disguised as her Queen]

SIR GERAINT - Very much under the spell of his female, maybe becyause he'd killed the male that fathered or fornicated her (we are unclear). Either way, there is easy conflict to be made. Too rightous for his own good and easily lured into showing off bravery.

SIR BEDIVERE - Old brute and a cripple, eager to prove himself constantly. Worships that fraud of a king like a dog. Maybe Arthur has some dirt on him. Could be one of Merlin's puppets as well. This guy is a tool, better to be avoided.

SIR BORS THE YOUNGER - Pretty face but will not touch human females. If we could lure him into mating one, it would for sure make him all sad and stuff.

MINOR KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE - Idiots, all of them. Sometimes they gain important quests and we gain an easy win when we SPOIL THEIR PLANS AND MAKE THEM SUFFER. It is fun, too.

LADIES OF THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE - Menaces, all of them, happily helping our cause out of boredom alone. Also like glittering things and are easily impressed throughout. But beware Merlin in all cases, as he very much runs the same game around them.

MORGAN LE FAY - She has beef with the king just like us. A bit on the cruel side and greedy, but we can make this work for us. If we can make big promisses, she can bring some pain to the court. Something to work towards. [Should appear in second half of campaign arc]

THE GREEN KNIGHT - He is fun and definitely an opportunist willing to help the cause on a favor for favor basis. Might not be human, too.

...

Something like that, I guess. It is those NPCs that populate the missions the group has to engage in to make a dent into the Arthurian legends of old while Merlin schemes to barter the mothership away to some third party to get off the planet himself (or something like that).

The King is not amused ...

General idea is to have some very angry and frustrated, but rather powerless aliens trying to mess up the affairs of men and collect enough resources to get their ship back and TAKE REVENGE. But it happens against a clock, of sorts, as the Arthurian legend runs counter to that (at the end of which Merlin gets to make Sir Bedivere give the ship to the entity know as "Lady in the Lake", maybe an arms dealer of sorts).

As far as the missions go, I'd re-utilize a tool I'm using for years now (and which readers might be aware of): The Random Narrative Generator for Lost Songs of the Nibelungs (can be used as is, but I'd rewrite it a bit f I were to publish it). The reason for that is simply that it provides exactly the quest notes Arthurian knights would go on and enough angles to make spoiling the quest something the aliens would attempt to do! So the GM would roll up a quest or two to see what the court is up to these days and throws the group some bones as incentives to intervene.

Let's test this. Example (dice say 28,6,4,2,2):

28. Exposure A villain is about to be exposed and the Court is summoned to help enforcing it. The exposure is initiated by a Force of Tradition that is mean and aims for trouble.

Interpretation: Well, what do we have here? Someone addresses King Arthur's court to help enforcing some law. It is something the King would have to address "because of the law", but the "force" initiating it does have mean intentions and is out for trouble, so it won't be an easy task for the Knights dealing with it, and it implies all kinds of useful angles for Aliens to exploit, maybe even escalate.

Okay, "force of tradition" could be an abbot of a monastery asking for help. "Exposing a villain" would be about someone breaking the law, maybe not paying tribute to the king by claiming to be poor. Let us say we have a little baron here that acts poor but actually sits on lots of wealth, hiding it from all. The abbot gets wind of this, and since he has an eye for some of the baron's land (there are the mean intentions), he snitches to the king, forcing him to act against the baron.

Something like this. So we have the mean abbot snitch, the greedy baron eager to keep his wealth and some knights in the middle trying to enforce the king's law. The aliens get wind of the abbot's claim and have a chance to get to the location and look into it before the knights appear. If they don't interfere, it happens what the prompt says: the baron gets exposed with the knight's help and the abbot gets his way. But there are several ways to spoil that whole affair for ALL involved, from getting the (minor, for sure) knights killed by escalating the conflict, by stealing the treasure before the knights arrive, making the abbot and the knights look stupid ... Anything the group can do with that premise and sounds fun will do.

So that's that. Characters next.

Character Generation

A bit of the nitty-gritty here. Basic idea (in my head) is that each player plays a GROUP of aliens, each of which is one aspect of a "alien collective". So one alien would be strength, one agility, one wisdom and so on. A bit like the smurfs (which is one obvious inspiration, of course), but they have to work together as units to be "whole". The combination of aliens and the available options are what makes this system, I think, so it needs lots of fun of those, and enough to make choices meaningful.

The group now, consisting of several of those "alien collectives", is what the players have to work with, so each player should decide for a group of aliens that make their individual alien collective as specialized as they want or the group needs. Maybe one AC (Alien Collective) focused on physical skill, one build focused on brainy stuff, one one sneaky stuff, one with a tech focus (they are aliens, after all), maybe a "management" build would be nice (helping the collectives work together), something for fighting, maybe ...

You get it.

What it comes down to is that a players dice will act like pets. They'll fight, too. Say, a big guy makes a mistake (roll of a 1). Damage would be that this die is downgraded one size (say, from d10 to d8) as a punishment. Now I imagine a rule that if a smaller die was used for the task as well, that die gets punished instead. Because that little asshole was laughing his ass off, and the big guy is not having it ...

Or a "bystander rule": instead of damaging a die used for a task and losing it (becvause downgrading a d4 would be a d0), another die of the same collective, not used for the task could take a harder hit instead (two downgrades ... you won't do that often). So that little asshole sees he made a mistake, but it is only a d4 and he'd be gone to the nursery and out of the game if downgraded. He won't take it, so he hides behind a d8 of the same Alien Collective who had nothing to do with it, and the d8 gets the punch but also falls pretty bad, and is now a d4 (two downgrades).

Using dice with equal value would have them bicker if one fails and they would be locked for the next task because of it (I imagine they get locked until the highest roll from a follow up task roll is used to unlock them and only the second highest is used towards the task difficulty ... something like that).

The game will have several synergy effects like this. Positive ones, too, obviously. Doubles and triples will automatically count towards the difficulty. Those dice just have fun working together. Big dice performing very well could allow for re-rolls of smaller dice to have them at least behave. Something along those lines.

Advancement would go the obvious routes of adding dice (recruiting), growing dice (genetics) and adding tools (extra little dice rules, basically) from the resources tree (won Mission Dice can be divided between spending them for advancement of collectives or for resources ... aliens want laser weapons, so make itr happen!).

The rest is ... ORWELL again?

Yeah. Doubles and triples do something, tasks are rolled against a difficulty, players take the highest result of the dice they used but can "buy" additional dice by making the DM stronger, the works. But (just like in part 1), a light version of it, mixed with other little twists that would fit that specific kind of game.

So instead of having a elaborate little system for the DM to gain and spent dice, he will get a pool of dice that the players basically fight for to get xp and resources (I call them "Mission Dice"). So if a DM wants to set a difficulty for a task, they offer dice from the pool as award (the dice offered make the difficulty). Menial tasks might just be a roll of the whole collective to see if they behave. Which means: roll over a certain limit that differs from die to die ... dice could have "moods" or "humors", too, now that I think about it (so get a higher die, but with a disadvantage that it is moody and misbehaves more easily).

If all behave, great, shit just works. If they outperform, they might get a boon for it, too (like minor healing of a damaged die, for instance, if the damaged die rolls its maximum). If half or more misbehave, shit doesn't work and might even produce problems if they underperform badly!

Cute little fucker ... but moody!

Antagonists (as outlined above) would represent additional rules that apply when they are involved in a mission, usually making things more difficult, but offering little loopholes as well (as per the legends of old, I imagine ... certain weaknesses make certain things easier with certain antagonists).

Mission is over when the dice pool that came up for the mission is gone (I'd go and take the d6 results from the RNG above ... 14 dice for the mission outlined above, for instance) or the Alien Collectives openly challenge the remaining pool for a showdown by claiming the mission is over (as in: the mission as outlined seems over and done with, but there are still dice left, so unforeseen circumstances make themselves felt ... I'd just add another roll of the RNG without adding the d6 as a follow-up of that story).

You could already play that, but would you?!

Alright, this is already at a level where I would feel comfortable to test run it. If I invest a little time into writing and layouting and throw some artwork at it (some of it you have seen here in the post), this could be done pretty soon, I imagine (and given how fast I managed to gobble Rebellion together!).

It would be a shame at this stage to not make it happen. Actually has potential for a series! ANGRY LITTLE ALIENS versus BILLY THE KID, anyone? [edited as I had some more ideas like: versus NERO or versus DRACULA! So much fun could be had] But the question remains: would you play that? Would you like to see any of that?

Thoughts and impressions are very welcome.

Would you play that? (Introducing: Legacy of Gyrthwolden)

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Sun, 10 Sep 2023 20:33:00 +0000

While ORWELL is getting an errata and a pdf release, I'm playing around with a couple of setting books based on the ORWELL rules I might start developing here on the blog (since I'm taking a close look at those rules again right now) and eventually publish, if they get any traction at all (or it just manifests, as the last game did!). There isn't enough concept work on the blog anymore, and that has always been loads of fun. Lets give it a shot!

Legacy of Gyrthwolden (Pitch)

Betrayal was what had the wardings fail. The whole school rotted from the insides like oil poisons water once the magical protection had been penetrated. They had no chance, but some still had fight left in them. It just made the destruction worse. Demons triumphantly stalked the halls, a whole menagerie of beasts had been unleashed and was spreading terror in the dormitories and the east wing. Students had turned into indescribable horrors, their screams driving others into murdering frenzies and ultimately into madness. The most powerful one ended up building a quivering flesh throne in the Lost Cellars where now the mad and mutilated mimic and pervert the old traditions Gyrthwolden held up until it fell.

And that is not all.

Within the faculty, impartial observers would have found bravery, defeat, cowardice and old grudges turning bloody fast as the end drew near. The arch chancellor had made the most impressive exit, devastatingly altering reality from the Hanging Gardens of your Holy Lady Reneviere to almost the entire Dyrkterwoods in the west. No one knew he still had it in him. Almost brought a turn of events, too, but then a doom engine materialized in his stomach and made itself a new home in his body. Some say his soul is still caught in there, tormented towards eternity. Maybe it's wishful thinking. He wasn't liked much.

Eventually, Gyrthwolden fell. Eventually, the smoldering ruins left behind cooled down and while the rest of the world fell into the darkness unleashed at the school, evil started creeping all over campus, struggling with nature for residency.

There was one area all of that could not penetrate. One last magical stronghold created through the most beautiful improvised ritual in the school's history. Build on a whim, tapping into a not yet corrupted flux of Aether, it bloomed like a flower and enclosed a whole schoolroom, layering the most severe, and costly, layers of protection around it. The teacher who did that had to forfeit her body and burn her soul to weave it strong enough to have a chance. It distorted space and time so elegantly, it stayed untouched by the apocalypse. It wove itself into a future where it persevered. It just cost all within its protective stasis dearly.

In a final effort, as her soul burned through its last milligrams some decades later, Etherina Dinklethorne forced out of stasis among the students she had saved those she thought had the most promise in a desperate and mad gambit to save of the world what may still be saved.

You are those students. You are the Legacy of Gyrthwolden.

This is her last message:

We failed you, my dear children. Our corruption and greed have brought doom to the world you knew. You are save here in this room, but outside these walls, darkness reigns. You have within you what it takes to push back ever so slightly. And if you persist diligently, if you prevail and trust that there still is light and good in the world, you have a chance to overcome this evil curse. I know that in my heart. Go now, my children. I will sacrifice my last energy to extent the wards surrounding you. I know not what will be trapped then with you inside my protective veil, so be careful. Start with freeing the school, building by building. Unlock its secrets and power, everything else will fall into place then. You will see. And never forget ...

But then her voice flattens to a whisper and as it disappears, the mummy of her corpse, trapped in an intricate summoning circle, explodes into a puff of glittering smoke.

IDEA: the students are still connected to the stasis field. When they die, they may feed their souls back into the classroom and awaken another student. No one knows how many and which students Miss Dinklethorne saved. Or what the magic did to them, for that matter, so this can be considered to be an infinite pool of replacement characters (or limited, if the GM feels like making this part of the challenge).

All said and done, it'll be your basic goth horror wizard school versus the apocalypse anime experience. Harry Potter goes Tim Burton and everything died but you ...

The Game (powered by ORWELL)

Basic premise of ORWELL is that character development happens as the character is played (each character can develop up to 10 slots per "Level"). Characters come with a potential, and players activate that potential as the story unfolds. They might create gadgets or skills or contacts, as far as the original game is concerned. Everything else is up to the players. If it fits the genre and the group can agree with it, it is fair play. Want to play a conscious spell that just wants to be human? You can do that. A little Lizard Wizard? Sure ... A sentient rock? If you can make it work. This is about having fun telling stories.

I'd shift those paradigms a bit to fit the story, so players may invent SKILLS, SPELLS or MAGIC ITEMS. While ORWELL would have players now roll to see how well established that power is, LoG might expand on that by making it something that might need to be obtained as well. Basically it'd need two additions:

1) Rules for Rituals that might need to reach a certain level, special items and specific roles for characters to assume. That'd block a slot or two. Rituals will open new areas and solve general problems with the curse.

2) Assuming the students have some idea where is what at that school, it'll need an extension where they manifest the school bit by bit as they talk about and explore it. Some stuff will be provided by the GM, but nothing says it couldn't work like character development does.

It had to be as procedural as ORWELL is, but shifting the focus a bit from having a proper cyberpunk district to where to find crucial quest items and knowledge and what difficulties await a group to their way there.

So they might know that the library would be great to have access to. And it is easy enough to assume that there is one. However, while they know where the library was before the fall, they sure as hell know nothing about what happened to it and how to get there now. So the GM will have tools to create a path of obstacles that fit the story to anything he or the group may come up with ...

There you go ...

I'd have to play around with that for a bit, but that's what a blog is for. Other than that, I'm pretty sure people could work with the premise alone easily. Doesn't even matter that much what system you are using. I guess.

ORWELL will be a great fit for the setting, on the system side of things, and given that the DM part is mostly system agnostic anyway, this should work for all kinds of games, if that's what you'd want to do.

So what do you guys think? Would you play that?

Rebellion - The Card Game is out now! (Publishing versus Blogging ... 1:0)

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 14:29:00 +0000

Yeah, I know, it's been a while. Other than having a new family member (which will have you quite busy, of course), I've also spent the free time I could get with ... writing another game: Rebellion - The Card Game! Crazy, right? It is a (fun!) card game, but still relates to one of the role-playing games I'm working on here at Disoriented Ranger Publishing: Brawlers! Lets talk about that, shall we?

Get it at a discount here!

Introducing: Rebellion - The Card Game

It is a card fishing game loosely inspired by games like Pasur or Scoba, but it comes with the additional layer of adding abilities to the cards that opens it all up to something more akin to games like Dominion, while staying with the classic, standard card decks (I might add customized decks later, but for now, the standards work perfectly well).

So, two sets of 52 standard card decks with two Jokers each (something every household should have, I assume) together with the rules will set you up nicely.

All else you'll need is at least one friend and a table to play on. Even digitally works very well: the card feature on roll20 works like a charm with this. Set up two standard card decks, one for the player of the King, the other for the Rebel Players, snatch the template from the pdf, the product page on drivethruRPG or here, put that as a map background, and you are good to go. Worked like a charm for us.

For the map layer in your roll20 game ...

Anyway, so how does it play? Well, as you can see on the mat above, it's about two sides fighting about cards in the middle, the so-called Realm. They do so by playing hand cards to reduce the Realm cards to zero and win them. Additional effects will alter that by adding fun little mechanics that give each side special boons and the Realm itself come with some interesting features that may offer opportunities for special moves and awards.

It's all well balanced and comes with a high re-playability, if I may say so. If you like card games with a quick set up that also carry a little depth once you dug into it, you should give Rebellion a chance. We have loads of fun playing it.

If you end up getting AND playing it, we'd be happy to hear about it. Naturally. And leaving some love on the product page is always appreciated.

Tie-in for a RPG that doesn't exist?

You remember Brawlers - A DungeonPunk RPG (formerly known as ~~Bastards!~~, er, ~~the Grind~~)? I'm still working on it. Rebellion is part of that process. The world of Brawlers was pretty dark: a sort of apocalypse took a dark spin on a vanilla fantasy setting. Now the monster menagerie is in charge and sitting on the ruins of the lost world. Characters go on "brawls" in that world to help petty gods back to power and kick some demon butt ... Rebellion is a card game from that long gone era. A reminder of better times, maybe, or just a card trick game played for coins. Illegal under the monster empire, of course That's the idea, anyway.

Maybe not the final cover ...

I was looking for a nice way to connect what the players are doing with that card based mission generator I wrote for it years back. I was thinking poker variant, but that never really clicked somehow. Roughly two months ago I had an epiphany of sorts: what if players get a chance during mission to challenge the BrawlMeister (the DM, so to say) to a game of cards, and if they win, it'll alter the mission parameters by creating some better conditions ... but if they lose, shit gets worse.

A no-brainer, since the cards already connect with the mission generator. All it needs is the specific ... And I already have some ideas for "wild" cards that could be played, as well as alternative decks and how it all connects to character levels. Lots of possibilities!

But for now, the game itself is done. I think it might make a good "setting game" for most fantasy settings. Something with its own lingo, something non-player characters might play or talk about. At least it will be that for Brawlers ... And it is fun to play by itself, so there is that.

What else is cooking?

I'll keep it short, but lots is happening. I decided to finally publish a pdf for ORWELL, that dystopian role-playing game I wrote and sold as dead tree copy only until now. Will make a little errata before that, make it all pretty and clean, with hyperlinks and bookmarks ... the whole ten yards. And then it'll go live. This month or next, I think.

I also got a bit of fiction published! A cyberpunk short story of mine appeared in a great anthology: Ipseities (by As If publishing). I liked all the stories, with three really exceptional favorites. Really a great anthology of weird and creative stories. Good company to be in! Really recommended, if nuweird is something you like.

I'm also working on all other fronts, and hope to get couple of things done before years end. Looks good right now. I feel it's happening. Look forward to see some more about be67 in the near future ...

What I imagine a be67 GM looks like ...

And the blog ... well, I need to do some more there, too. It takes a bit of a back seat, but I have that review series with my friend Eric going, so something like that will happen next. If I can do it on the sly.

So that's it. A lot is happening behind the scenes, but you guys will see results soon. Some proper rpg material will hit digital shelves in the very near future! Stay tuned. And check out Rebellion. It really is tons of fun.

The King disapproves of your attempts to resist ...

Revisions Part 2: The True Nature of Encounters (with another excerpt from be67)

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 09:31:00 +0000

Hello, friends and neighbors. How's life? Mine (thanks for asking) is good but busy. Still can't leave the blog hanging like that. I keep finishing be67 as of this writing, but I am making progress, if ever so slowly. We are now testing this with another GM having a go at it (the great Mark van Vlack is giving it a shot ...), and it has been a most illuminating experience so far (and a blast rolling dice with Jay and Eric ... first time I had the pleasure of playing with my good friend Eric from Methods & Madmen!). Turns out, you can write 140 pages of rules and still miss some of the more crucial aspects of the game unmentioned.

To give you an idea ...

Anyway. I'm on it. We are here to talk what works, which would be the Narrative Encounter Generator that game features. Lets have a look ... You could also check out part 1 first.

Lost Songs did something like it!

Lost Songs of the Nibelungs is another game still happening that hasn't seen love in some time now. Things is, all the work I put into other games right now is (still) to make LSotN the best game I can make. One of the most crucial parts (no one seems to care about) is what encounters are and how they measure towards a gaming system. As most of you will be aware, it never translates fully. Not all non-player characters are fully statted or carry even a tenth of what your basic character sheet will hold.

Couldn't, to be honest, unless it'd be a game with very basic values and no real depth. A game needs to provide the necessary data as soon as it is needed, which can be tricky, of course, if it is a whole lot of information a GM needs fast. D&D is a bit more complex like that, but can take a huge amount of punishment before breaking down and (for instance) killing a party because a random encounter turned out to be too hard. That can be a boon (as gamemasters can wing it and get away with it), but it also comes with huge disadavantages when you actually try to emulate it properly in your gamedesigns.

Seems like lots of it had been guesswork ...

Now, what you can learn when designing it from the bottom up, is, that it needs a deep understanding of what encounters really are and how they need to connect the game with players and gamemaster in a meaningful way.

I think one of the bigger misconceptions early D&D let fester, was the reduction of encounters to only being entities to interact with. It codified the idea that the game is around encountering monsters and taking their treasure. That this is only partly true is easily obvious as soon as one takes a closer look at all the interactive elements those games offer: ability scores, skills, saves ... all tools to probe a fictive reality in several different ways. role-playing games are about interacting with everything imaginable in the narrated surrounded. Everything the players ENCOUNTER, that is.

First time I developed designs in that direction was when writing Lost Songs, where characters didn't encounter entities as much as "narrative concepts" associated with fairy tales that may manifest as some sort of entity, but could be something entirely different, like a storm or a landscape feature that offers ineraction of some sort.

You can take a close look at that Random Narrative Generator here (damn ... that was seven years ago!). It is thoroughly tested, and let me tell you: it writes fantastic D&D stories, even on the fly. A variant of this is used to generate cyberpunk stories to great effect in ORWELL, too.

Turns out, however, that be67 needed a somewhat different approach. What I ended up with is a tool where the same method is used (generating abstract and random narrative encounters), but with more individual encounters specifically designed for one scenario instead of a whole genre. It helps focusing on the movie part of the experience, while somewhat moving away from the sandbox approach (characters are still having freedom of choice, but not as much on a fictive map as what the action sequences and movie scenes are, in a sense).

I already shared this in Part 1, but here it is again in the new context presented here:

So instead of a barony in your fantasy setting that has specific problems and quests, the movie title is the "territory" the players are exploring, and everything is geared towards that specific experience. You have a Zombie movie, scenic encounters should be about humanity failing to push back against the undead: streets with abandoned cars, overrun military outposts, burning cities. An encounter like that should set the mood.

Landmark would additionally offer some form of orientation (you'll notice that the encounters are arranged hierarchically), and might offer left behind messages by other survivors, like "Newport is still free", or "We are meeting at the Hargrave military base", or something along those lines.

Benign NPCs, then, would be other survivors with no ill will towards the characters, most likely (given the genre) someone needing help one way or another.

Challenges could be anything from avoiding zombie infested areas to getting some form of energy (gas for a car, electricity, wood even) or ressource (ammunition might be a bg on here). A threat would be to get discovered, for instance, or overrun, while the main plot would hint towards the source of the zombie uprise, while the Main Evil is the source itself, and "showdown" would offer some form of solution to the get rid of the main evil. In this case, it might be a face-off with the zombie master (the difference between "just" encountering him as "Main Evil" would be that in a showdown, it is personal for some reason ... "You know my secret, therefore you must DIE!").

Now think about how those parameters might shift if it where, say, an alien invasion of body snatchers, or the plot of some Bond villain for world domination ... All get different NEG, but they might interact, even, like different locations would in a fantasy setting but as movie sets instead.

Throw some sixties weirdos into that (classes in be67 are Journalist, Outlaw, Activist, Spy, Flower Child, Saboteur, Veteran), and you got a game going!

How is all of that explained in the book, then?

The thoughts tying all of this together in be67, are formulated in the beginning of the GM chapter of the book (right after establishing the genre, as you may read here). Consider this (unedited, as it were):

HOW TO STRUCTURE THE GAME

But how to tell those stories? How to prepare for them? There is more to a story than having some maps and the numbers and information for monsters or Non-Player Characters on hand. It all needs to come together, at best gearing towards a very specific experience: bloody grindhouse cinema in the Weird Sixties.

As we just established, we are already half way there. The system carries a lot just by setting up specific player goals and resolving all of it geared towards that experience. It does not tell a story, however.

All the sources of inspiration we offered so far will also go a long way, giving GMs ideas what elements they might want to see in their games. And while that might lead to some satisfying adventures, it’d be difficult to make that a campaign to last over the course of 30 levels. It needs more than that.

The following segment will give some basic information how to prepare and tell stories as well as connecting all of that within a be67 campaign.

The Rule of Cool!

The first bit of structure every game needs is an understanding between the participants what “fun” constitutes for their gaming. They need to be on the same page about what be67 can be at their table. The Weird Sixties can provide a wide array of possibilities beyond what the hard rules the game already provides are able to convey.

You can have dog fights with dragons over New York, hunt werewolf Nazis lurking in the deep snow of Antarctica, or head expeditions into the Hollow Earth to fight dinosaurs and King Kong. All with a good dose of splatter and psychedelics … A GM’s imagination is the limit and a group’s willingness to suspend their disbelief directly correlates with the fun that can be had in be67.

The Rule of Cool, then, is basically a sleight of hand allowing “Suspension of Disbelief” by explaining what can happen as “movie magic” as long as it does not contradict the rules presented here.

A Character loses an arm? Why not let them have a prostheses with a shotgun because they “know a guy”? It is easy enough to see the advantages and disadvantages of something like that (even how to express and expand on it within the rules!). The blunt weapon of choice a Character is using is a frying pan? Why not have them do just as much damage as a mace would? The damage would be the same since Weapon Mastery doesn’t make that distinction. They could use a spoon, for that matter.

In a sense it is the logical consequence of how weird the setting is combined with how flexible the rules are. There is a “wiggle room” in between, and exploring that is part of the fun. In that spirit, The Rule of Cool proposes to let the imagination go wild for the fun of it. Not as a hard rule, but as something to keep in mind and everybody has an understanding of.

The easiest way to build tension?

The smallest narrative unit relevant in a role-playing game is an ENCOUNTER with an interactive element of the game. Those elements are interactive as soon as they enter the narrative, which could be as benign as a passer-by on the street or even just the entrance into a cave. For there to be tension, however, it needs to signal that there is either something to gain or something to lose. In raw game terms, gaining could simply mean xp while losing might simply mean losing Hit Points. In more general terms it might mean information that somehow brings the narrative forward.

By asking lots of questions about their surroundings, players will actually fish for interactive elements that can be salvaged for in-game currency most of the time without further initiative necessary from the GM. The art of gamemastering, however, is in shaping the dynamics of that fishing. There’s a couple of simple rules to follow when working Encounters into the game:

No Encounters Without Purpose – Encounters should always at least manifest one element of the setting, the mission or the scene. Even if totally random, the benefit must be either for meaningfully enhancing the atmosphere, enriching the world or advancing the game.
Always A Tease – No Encounter should occur without being hinted towards first at least once. It does not matter if the players are looking for the Encounter or the other way around.
Always A Catch – The more the players want something, the more they are willing to do for it, so the effort needed to have something happen is an easy regulator for a GM to motivate players into spending resources or have them drop an attempt by making the attempt too expensive. Teasing helps finding out how big of a catch an Encounter allows and which challenges are acceptable to engage with it.
Play With the Unknown – Signs of an Encounter about to happen should be as obscure as the narrative allows and might even be misleading as long as the reveal is able to explain what had happened.
(Let Them) Run With It – Encounters should never be changed while manifesting in order to accommodate the players’ intuitions about what’s happening or going to happen.
Allow Tension, Allow Release – The interplay of teasing, little challenges and The Unknown will produce tension during Encounters, but tension always needs to be released as well. It is crucial to resolve all Encounters if the end of the Encounter is not obvious, even those that fail to manifest completely (due to a failed challenge, for instance) need to be resolved by signaling the Players that whatever was happening has come to some sort of end.
Never Stop Moving – Ideally, players will always look for something or have questions, which means there are enough encounters to explore around them. That said, it is always good to pile on what is existing to have something to engage them with as soon as the game stalls for some reason. A good rule of thump is to have at least three encounters manifesting at all times in some form or another, while being on the lookout to add even to that.
[ADVANCED] Little Puzzles Everywhere – What applies for Encounters in detail (as described above), does also apply for the sum of all Encounters over the course of a Session (or even several Sessions). Encounters map the gaming world for the players, and GMs should aspire to allow for meaningful patterns to appear on those maps for the Players to discover and play around with.
[ADVANCED] Encounters Triggering Encounters – While the above suggests an organic flow of the action manifesting from the interaction between narration, gamemaster and players, it is important to stress that encounters might escalate situations based on wrong decisions the players went for, making life more dangerous because of it. A natural consequence of bad decisions is, therefore, that additional encounters manifest immediately into the encounter that is playing out, making a bad situation worse. Gamemasters are encouraged to let that happen, but also signal that things are forced to escalate and the dangers associated with the escalation.
[ADVANCED] Time is a Construct – Not all encounters follow – or should follow – in a timely fashion. Sometimes it is, instead, advisable to have time pass without incidence, and without the attempt to fill the passing time with meaning. It just passes. The narration bridging the time gap sets up the next encounter instead, manifesting after the designated time has passed. Since there is an arbitrary element to this process, doing so deliberately between encounters will help shaping the narrative favorably while allowing for drastically shifting a group’s surroundings in a natural way, if need be.

Following the advice formulated above should lead to satisfying gaming loops in all Sessions when the challenges offered cover the range of systems that make be67, no matter the specific adventure. The next important step is to set the frame for those Encounters to happen in.

What kind of Encounters does the game need?

As already established: for the purposes of this game, an Encounter is basically EVERY element in the game the Characters can interact with. It needs to be distinguished, however, between NARRATIVE and STATIONARY Encounters. The first category is occurring in a (usually randomized) sequential manner as the story unfolds, the second comprises a set of necessary locations the Characters can (or need to) find over the course of a scenario or adventure.

Those two categories will interact with each other as the game progresses. Not only will the Stationary Encounters summon the “back cloth” for the run time of a specific movie scenario and keep that present, some locations will also be more dangerous than others and that will alter Narrative Encounters as well.

--------------------------------

And that's how it's done in the book. Build on that follow tools to create challenges and monsters, going more and more into what the rules actually need (from most abstract, like shown above, to most crunchy).

This is where I'm at ...

At the moment I'm hammering down the finer details of this. It all needs to click in the end so that all those different ideas and designs come together into something coherent. Not easy (as it turns out), but fun nonetheless. Takes time, however (who'd have thought ...).

So this is what I'm doing when I'm doing something right now.

Artwork for the Spy in be67!

Well, what do you guys think about it? You think encounters should be EVERYTHING, to one degree or another, anyway, or is it too confusing for those used to the very specific way D&D established so many moons ago? Would you use it like I propose here? As always, your thoughts are very welcome.

And now back to work ...

Is it Appendix N worthy material? The Sword Itself by Joe Abercrombie (Review & my Appendix N)

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Mon, 08 May 2023 14:08:00 +0000

This is part 2 of our book review series. "Our" meaning that Eric Diaz over at the wonderful blog Methods & Madmen and yours truly started readig books together and share our thoughts about them on our respective blogs. I'm a little late for this one, so this one better be good. What I can say up front is that I did NOT like the book, and I could go on in detail why it is objectively bad just by comparing it with the book I read after The Blade Itself, which was Ravenheart by David Gemmell ... A book so much better, the thought Abercrombie is a younger author, standing on those mighty shoulders just to take a piss, almost brought me to tears. Instead of being negative about a bad book, I'll also offer my Appendix N at the end. Never did that for some reason, and this is a good opportunity.

[source]

Before I start doing my thing and embrace my feelings for this grotesque mockery of a "dark fantasy story", you might want to go and check out Eric's take on the book here.

If you are just here for the Appendix N, and not for the rant, please feel free to scroll down to that part.

Kudos for writing a book, champ ...

I'm not trying to be cute here. Writing a book, quality not withstanding, is a HUGE task. If you manage that, and even end up with something close to coherent, you deserve praise. There are no two ways about it. It shows dedication and stamina. But to write an atrocity like "The Blade itself" and end up being called an "authority" in the dark fantasy genre is a bit much. Gemmell could have written circles around the guy after having a stroke, it's so bad.

Calm, calm, calm ... All I'm saying is, we have very capable fantasy authors out there writing good books, even setting new standards. Go as far back as the pulps and you already get Burroughs and Lovecraft and Howard and Turner and Moorcook and Farmer and even Heinlein. Add Lewis Carroll and C. S. Lewis to that and don't forget Tolkien, Peake and Ursula K. Le Guin, voices so strong, they shaped fantasy for centuries to come.

All of them providing more than enough reading material to have you set for a long time before you have any need to look for something good next. And an even longer time before your eyes should fall on Abercrombie's atrocity.

There is free amateur translated Chinese fantasy out there that is better than this shit. Microsoft AI could write a better novel than that, it's that bad.

Anyway, there is better. You go contemporary, you'll find Pratchett there on the high throne all things fantasy. There's also Robert Jordan worth mentioning, as well as Neil Gaiman (although they'd be on different ends of a spectrum that could be considered "fantasy"). Simon R. Green has some very solid entries into the genre, and there are Joel Rosenberg, Garth Nix, Paul Kearney and Philip Pullman to check out as well. Or have you seen what Piers Anthony is offering? Roger Zelazny needs to be on this list, too!

And that's just a superficial look at my book shelves, not even going beyond the native English authors. There's lots of great French fantasy, for instance (if you can track down the books by Gilles Servat, for instance, that's good reading), Poland has a strong scene as well (the Witcher series is quite popular, it seems), and Germany isn't that bad either (Cornelia Funke, Wolfgang Hohlbein, Kai Meyer, Walter Moers ...). Doesn't matter where you go, you'll find something that shines more than this turd. Even if you use google translate to read them, you'd end up having a better reading experience.

It's that bad.

You just want it dark? There's also lots to read: G. R. R. Martin has his cult following, Steven Erikson's Malazan series is among the best dark fantasy you could read, Glen Cook wrote lots of great dark fantasy (although I really love his Garrett P. I. series more). And David Gemmell is up there, of course. As is Stephen R. Donaldson.

What gets a good book recognized? Time!

I always loved to read. Right now I manage to read round about 40 books a year. It'd been more for a long time, it'd been less for a bit of time. I'm also, as you might know, a bookseller. One of the things you learn when becoming a bookseller in Germany is that every category has its jewels, its great books. Doesn't matter if travel or IT or fantasy or, say, women's books, you look long enough, you'll find something worth your while (although I always found it strange that women get their own category of books while men don't).

Another thing is the idea of fixing prices for books, which we still have in Germany. That's a good thing, and I'll tell you why as well. For one, big publishers cannot strong-arm small publishers out of business with price dumping. Seen the other way around, small publishers can make a living with their products and that leads to more diversification. It gives people a chance who wouldn't have one otherwise, which leads to an enrichment in culture.

And those publishers do get their chance here. Maybe less so than 20 years abo, but they still do. Book fairs, for instance, are great for the small press, the book sellers still go through all the catalogues and complimentary copies they get sent, and there still are solicitors sent by publishers that aim to shine a light on new books we'd miss otherwise ...

... because here's the thing: in Germany we get round about 90.000 new publications per year. Books, all of them. There are school books and all that jazz among them, but still, it is a humongous amount of books. If you were just to trust the industry, you could, for a long time, see a process at work

where people write a book, then
go to find a publisher (first gate to filter out trivel like that Abercrombie book)
if, done, have the book edited, printed and marketed (another filter, if a finer one ... your book may come out, but without getting some love from the publisher, so no one notices), then
book sellers get their dirty paws on it, maybe read it (sometimes even before publication), maybe give it a special place in their shop with higher visibility, maybe recommend it, and then
people buy it and read it and, ideally, talk about it or buy it again as presents for others or review it, to finally
the book gaining some profile in the general public.

And that is a lot of rings to jump through. Usually, the way it is set up, it might be hard on authors, as they have to actually manage to carve out a place among other well established authors, old or contemporary, but for a culture it is what you'd want to have, as (ideally) you'd build excellence on excellence.

Now, we know that things have never been easy like that. You'd have phases of (unfounded) elitism surrounding literature, you'd have societal trends that bring specific needs that wouldn't last but earn a pretty buck in short terms. And still, over time those established systems would produce results. Quality (usually) will be recognized over time.

Nowadays it is somewhat different, however, as all active elements in the list above try to subvert that system for as long as it exists, obviously. We also experience a severe form of cultural stagnation right now as the mainstream will not stop ruminating the last 40 years of the 20th century. To a degree where the only innovation in that regard seems to be to charge old ideas with new ideologies. Established publishers are not immune to those trends, and it shows.

Add to that desktop publishing and self publishing and all the other new and beautiful ways that allow authors to directly market to their audience ... with all the good and bad that entails.

But the far bigger problem, the problem that allowed for something like The Blade Itself to not only be published, but even gaining popularity, is that publishers try to sell us the same ideas again and again by claiming it'd be something "new". It is why you don't see as much Pratchett or Gemmell in book shops anymore. They are dead, so there won't be any new books written by them, which is why they aren't presented as options anymore.

In a way, The Blade Itself is what 60 years of cultural incest looks like. The good genes authors like Tolkien provided diluted over time into something that lacks in every capacity. And that The Hype Machine (tm) never looks back and compares, well, looking at D&D 5e we know what that looks like. Reviewers want free shit and money, they don't really care what they are hustling. Or even what they are saying, most of the time. It's only always just about pushing the next hype in order to milk it.

And it needs to happen fast, too. Good example for that was the finale of Game of Thrones the tv show. You could see what disregarding quality in order to keep the pace HBO deemed necessary lead to: a total train wreck, with the author of the book series not even having a say in how it's going down nor getting a chance to have his final book in the series published.

See what I mean? You can't take 4 years to write a book. You need to have published at least 2 books a year to get a chance.

Those cycles are so fast right now, the only thing still working properly in recognizing something worthwhile is time combined with the experience to sniff out bullshit before buying it. Most of the time that means taking a step or two back from what's happening in book shops and forums, and branching off from titles you know instead. What did authors like who wrote books you liked? What did they recommend? Find opinions you can trust (actually one of the original functions of booksellers, believe it or not), go it from there.

That's at least what I'm doing ... Even so, every now and then you'll encounter a stinker like The Blade Itself. Which is okay, as long as you learn from it and adapt. In this case, I really hope Abercrombie got better in his later books, but I won't find out until some very compelling evidence emerges that it's not all unjustified hype. Same goes for Brandon Sanderson, btw. Another highly overrated fantasy author I won't touch anymore after reading one of his abysmal books.

Sanderson is also bad memories ... [source]

You might wonder at this point what has me so riled up, so here are some highlights. All the characters are one dimensional, there is no development at all, there is no growth or interaction. A character is one thing, and that's what they are throughout. Since they are all "dark" in addition to being flat, you'll end up only getting the superficial trifle of unlikable people.

The world building is atrocious. You have pseudo Scandinavians in the north, pseudo Renaissance in the middle and pseudo Persian in the south, all of them portrayed as their worse cliches and with a bit of magic mixed in to cut even more corners. No variety, no color, no depth just arrogantly uneducated surface perceptions. Not only is it a very low resolution understanding of history, it is also in almost all cases the most boring choice of world building imaginable (a modicum of research would have rectified that, but even that seemed too much effort).

The story is so flat, it can be summarized in two sentences. Instead it is spread over more than 500 pages. And nothing happens. If something interesting happens, it does so between chapters. Example: There's a big fight scene, built up for over two hundred pages ... and it is skipped. What we get, as far as combat goes, is uninspired at best. The dialogue is lacking as well. And all of it is riddled with stupid cliches. The king is fat and unable to function, so others do his job, but they are corrupt meanies ... Oh, also no relevant female characters worth mentioning.

And don't get me started with the "monsters" this book tries to establish. One is introduced in the first chapter, the so-called "flatheads". But they are neither described nor distinguishable from humans and we learn only some 400 pages later that they are supposed to be the creation of some evil wizard back when ... So they are something like orcs. But actually, they are not established beyond being a MacGuffin. No culture, no color, no details ... you get my drift.

As for being "delightfully evil" as the Guardian seems to put it (and whatever that is supposed to mean, btw), I couldn't agree less. Nothing in this book is "evil". I've seen evil (listen to her story, for instance ... the part with the dog? that's pure evil), this ain't it, and I actually despise people that try to make "evil" look "cool". Who wouldn't after seeing what evil does?

It is an awful book. Not recommended, and people doing so should be regarded with suspicion, imho.

Concessions ...

Let me be clear: I don't regret one word I wrote about The Sword Itself. It is a bad book, published in a cruel marketing scheme that aims for quantity before quality, that wants you to buy, not necessarily to read or even think and compare, and is feeding a whole industry that is more about looking good while standing in front of a wall of books than about actually talking shop.

Customers are fucked with this scheme, and usually you won't have more than one in five people not going along with anything like this and being open about it. 20% will just drink the cool aid, 60% will not challenge it, and 20% will be really pissed when falling for books like that or the hype surrounding them.

That said, I do recognize that hyped books like this are one way to motivate newbies into looking for other books in the same genre, which will, which MUST lead to better options sooner or later. So if you don't know better and ended up liking the book, not all is lost.

I'll also concede that taste is an evolving phenomenon. The more you read, the more refined your taste will end up being. Not sure I could stomach some of the books I liked, say, 30 years ago, and I might, after rereading some, change my opinion on others. All part of the process. For sure.

I'm also willing to concede that taste is a spectrum. To a degree, and with the constraints, that "popular" doesn't mean "good" and that cultural standards are necessary to get some evolution going, even only to have that evolution challenge the standards. Same goes for opinions, while we are at it, as it is easy to see why you would not just trust anyone, and instead hope that the standards you have for opinions actually bring good results in your everyday life. You wouldn't trust a six year old with their opinion on what car to buy, for instance.

Which has nothing to do with Abercrombie's writing here, as that's just unacceptable all around.

[source]

Anyway, enough of this. You wanna see why this is a bad book, and mine or Eric's take aren't enough, check out the one star reviews over at good reads. They seem to sum it up well. I'd rather end this with something more productive and positive! Hence ...

My Appendix N

It is always fun to learn what inspires others, so I decided to share what works inspire my writing and game design (as far as I'm aware of it). It is also in the hope that others will do the same. I'm sure it has been an OSR trend at some point in the past. Even so, remind me then, why not?

A few caveats: I'll go with "inspirational and educational" first, so this might end up including creators of movies and music instead of "just" authors. I'm reluctant to share works I know to be only available in German, or at least not in English, because what would be the point of you knowing I liked something that is completely out of reach for you? If you are interested in that, say so in the comments and I will oblige.

I'll also order it alphabetically within different groupings and I'll spare you recommendations for Tolkien, Herbert and K. Le Guin, authors you'll still easily find in well sorted book shops anyway (and if I end up recommending another classic, then I liked it more, hehe). No hierarchy is intended, nor do I believe that this trumps the original Appendix N (which is very much its own thing). I think it is a fun thing to do, with a good chance of being informational for people*.

SPECULATIVE FICTION

Richard Adams - Watership Down is one of the great adventure stories out there. A must read, imo.

Peter S. Beagle - Mainly for The Last Unicorn. He caught magic in a bottle there.

Glen Cook - While all his other work is very well worth checking out, the Garrett P. I. books are what brought me joy for decades (I'm a sucker for "fantasy noir" that is also funny). Great world, great voice, fantastic characters, and funny as well.

Warren Ellis - Transmetropolitan (comic) is the ultimate cyberpunk story, imho. And he did way more great work than that. Wrote some really weird and funny books, too: check out Crooked Little Vein for a wild ride.

Steven Erikson - Malazan Book of the Fallen ... this series had me laughing and crying and thinking. And binge reading hundreds of pages in sleepless nights (to be young again ...). Such impressive world building, mixed in with epic battles and complex characters. Can't recommend enough.

Philip José Farmer - Have yet to read a book penned by him I didn't enjoy. So many great ideas through all genres.

Neil Gaiman - Great comics, great books. My favorites are: Neverwhere (proper dungeon under London), Stardust (great story, made for a great movie, too!) and The Graveyard Book (a child growing up among the ghosts of a graveyard ... what's not to like?!).

David Gemmell - Start with Knights of Dark Renown, his second novel, and the Drenai Saga ... go from there. His last books are so well written, it is a marvel to behold.

William Gibson - Such an unique and innovative voice ... All his books are demanding and fun experiences.

Katharine Kerr - I immensely enjoyed here Celtic fantasy series about reincarnating souls, the Deverry Cycle ... very unique way of telling stories. And she's rpg nobility, too! Co-wrote an AD&D module and some Pendragon adventures, among other things (check out her wiki ...).

Michael de Larrabeiti - The Borribles is one of the more obscure titles in this list, but still a great trilogy. As far as adventure stories go, I'd rank it up there with Watership Down, actually.

Garth Nix - The Abhorsen Books (Old Kingdom) are why I wanted him on this list. It is among the best world building out there (alternate steampunk UK with old magic and zombies). And he wrote a lot more than that ...

Mervyn Peake - Gormenghast is poetic and funny and weird ... believe people telling you those books are among the best out there. They are.

Terry Pratchett - His Discworld books are among the best fantasy you can read. Funny, humane, stimulating ... and full of great characters. But I guess everyone knows that (still had to make the list).

Joel Rosenberg - The Guardian of the Flame is a series of books about a group of role-playing gamers that magically gets transported to the world of their gamemaster and into the bodies of their characters. If that doesn't sell you for the books, it's well written, too.

James Stoddard - The three books that make the Evenmere series are an alternate take to the idea of an endlessly sprawling dungeon world (a mansion so big, it has kingdoms in the lower levels). Fantastic world building and storytelling.

Jack Vance - The only author I learned about through the original Appendix N (the rest I had heard about through other channels), but such a great discovery. I have yet to read a book by Vance I didn't like. All of it fascinating and entertaining, not only the Dying Earth books.

T. H. White - The Once and Future King is another classic series that made the list. Although the first one is the most famous (for the obvious reason that Disney made an animated version of it), I loved all four books (if for different reasons, as each change tone as Arthur ages).

Roger Zelazny - The Chronicles of Amber books ... I binged an omnibus of the first five books of this series when I was 13. A great and epic story about powerful plane shifting nobles fighting The Court of Chaos.

ADDITIONAL MENTIONS

Charles Bukowski - So much talent, always a great read.

Kinky Friedman - Surreal crime fiction, very drug induced, pretty weird, always funny.

Harper Lee - I loved To Kill a Mockingbird, so it made the list.

Elmore Leonard - Among the best writing out there. Good reading, all of it (and some great movies and TV series as well!)

Chuck Palahniuk - Everyone knows Fight Club, the movie. He wrote the book and you could guess by that alone that he's as weird an author as they come. I love him for it. No book is like the other and they all are wild rides into the unknown and unthought. Funny, too.

MIND BENDING

Ken Webster - The Vertical Plane is the over four decades old account of a "haunting" that hasn't been debunked yet. No one reads this (or looks into this) that doesn't go away thinking "This might actually have happened ... but what the fuck would that mean for our understanding of reality!?". One of the best books I ever read, I kid you not.

Jeffrey John Kripal - Authors of the Impossible is another one of those books that pushes the boundaries of reality. Highly recommended.

Truddi Chase - When Rabbit Howls is a book written as the collaborative effort of the roughly 100 souls of Trudi Chase, a very well documented case of multiple personality disorder. And a very tough read that is VERY hard to stomach, but all the same endlessly fascinating.

SPIRITUAL

Lao Tse - The Tao Te Ching introduced me to a new and different way of thinking compared to what I was used to, growing up in 90s Germany. I still read and re-read it (different translations, different languages ... stuff like that) and it inspires my thinking to this day.

Chuang Tse - If you read the Tao Te Ching, checking out Zhuangzi is the next logical step. And also, for me at least, a life-long exercise.

I Ching - Basically the shamanistic roots of the Taoist books quoted above, and a great oracle (in my experience). You want to play around with it, check it out here.

The Edda - The older I get, the more I appreciate that these old stories are attempts to describe a long gone reality, and as such they are immensely precious. The Edda especially so, since it is about the pre-history of Europe and as such of great interest to me.

FILM

Wes Anderson - A director with such a distinct and beautiful voice that he had to make the list. Movies I grew up with, so to say. some are outright perfect, all of them have something magical (personal favorites right now are Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel and The French Dispatch).

David Lynch - Yeah, he pushes all the buttons. I love Twin Peaks. All of it (third season was ... not what anyone expected, which is what Lynch aimed for). Dune is a piece of art (and one wonders what he'd done with it if the studio hadn't interferred!). Blue Velvet was the movie I shouldn't have seen as a kid ... Mulholland Drive is such a trip. I love it all.

Shinichirō Watanabe - The original Cowboy Bebop (not the live-action atrocity that is on Netflix) and Samurai Champloo are fan favorites everyone should have seen. But all his anime series are fantastic for one reason or another, and I have a special weak spot for the genius that is Space Dandy. So much fun.

MUSIC

Edvard Grieg - Norwegian Composer, mostly know for his Peer Gynt Suite. Such a great entry point for learning about classic music.

Tom Waits - I discovered him late in his career and worked my way through all of it. A great musician, of course, but where he always gets me is the lyrics. So inspirational. Favorites of all time are the albums Alice, Blood Money and Real Gone.

Gautier Serre (IGORRR) - Strangest for last, I guess. A weird mix of all musical genres I like. Always fresh, always different, very complex ... fun all around! Here, check it out.

So this is where it ends, the strange tour through what inspired me for the last decades. I'm pretty sure I missed something and it'll come to me later ... It's also part of a journey I'm still on, of course. My reading list is HUGE, and I'm bound to discover more gems like the above (at least I hope so). I already mentioned my approach: look closer at what you like and follow the bread crumbs.

Either way, 37 entries that should keep one busy for a long time. I hope you all found something you didn't know but is interesting enough to follow up on. I definitely had fun with all of it. Just one more thing before I wrap this up: I'm sure all the people linked above had their flaws. I just don't care. What I shared here is in appreciation of their art, of the positive marks they left on the world. Everything else is just noise.

So what's your guys' Appendix N? What did you find here that intrigues you?

* Monkey Business and ORWELL both feature lists like that to help readers getting an idea where I'm coming from, same is the case for be67 (as shown here).

"I'm a horse now!", says the mule ... (mistakes have been made)

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Fri, 07 Apr 2023 16:08:00 +0000

Let's have some commentary on the latest WotC kerfuffle: no "mixed races" anymore, because that is deamed "racist". Now, we need to be careful here as not to fall for the obvious groupthink bait, and look at it as is. Has it merit? Is it a good idea? Because it could have, but still is! This, then, is a the simple attempt of a small blogger to see what they are talking about here. Spoiler alert: this is not about racism, in any shape, way, or form. All of this is, if nothing else, a mistake in terminology ...

Cutting to the chase real quick

Half-Elves are no more, at least officially and as far as D&D is concerned. Same goes for Half Orcs and any other halves you could think of in your games. We are talking fictional characters here, just to be very clear about this from the beginning, so no sensitivities are presumed. I mean, if a true half elf were to comment to make their case, I'd be listening (needs to be the real deal, too, just "identifying" as one won't be enough).

Just a little joke ... hehe [source]

But I won't be holding my breath.

This is about a twist to a character one might want to play in a game. Something that plays differently on a narrative and (ideally) on a mechanical level of the game. I've always held the opinion that each GM should play with those options in order to make their campaigns unique. I have a very different take on elves, for instance (very old post here). Either way, taking away those options is bad style. Doing it for "politics" just leaves a bad taste in the mouth here. Pandering like that is divisive and should be frowned upon for that alone. Where are the bridges? Where is the love?

In other words: why isn't there a compromise? Because there is compromises to be had, for sure. Just a very superficial survey of less reputable sources like Wikipedia will tell interested parties that an "Elf" is considered to be a "humanoid supernatural being". It is right there in the first sentence. "Humanoid", now, would mean that it is a "non-human entity" carrying some human traits. That second Wikipedia entry goes on to explain that there is the idea of "convergent evolution", which would mean that different species may come to the result through different evolutionary paths.

I think that's quite easy to understand. There's a couple of useful ways to interact with reality, less so the more specific the interaction, so the concept that different species come to the same results isn't hard to grasp.

The next stop down this rabbit hole would be "species", then. Wikipedia says:

In biology, a species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction.

You see, just by following some easily visible bread crumbs, you'll find out that saying elves can be considered a humoid species would be a very well grounded assumption. Not "race" (which is obviously politically AND historically loaded), but "species". Took me longer to write this than to find it out, which should be an indicator how readily available this information is.

There are even pictures about it:

[source]

"Traditionally" it is "Race" in D&D, though. Right?

The funny thing is: yes and no. As far as I can tell, when it first came up, they talked "demihuman races", which is all mixed up terminology. And yes, it is carried along for some time unquestioned. That said, they caught up to it relatively early, actually. Here's what you'll find in the AD&D 2E Player Handbook (first paragraph introducing the concept):

After creating your character's ability scores, you must select a player character race. This is not a race in the true sense of the word: caucasian, black, asian, etc. It is actually a fantasy species for your character -- human, elf, dwarf, gnome, half-elf, or halfling. Each race is different. Each possesses special powers and has different lists of classes to choose from.

That's interesting, isn't it? They are actually talking species and just CHOSE to call it race (maybe because it had been established as "races"?). They willingly tried to expand what "race" means instead of using the term "species". But they also CLEARLY categorize it in the sense of SPECIES (that is: biologically) as early as 1989!

My beloved HackMaster 4E actually makes the same statement (HM 4E PHB, p. 22):

Note that when we speak of 'race' in HackMaster, it has nothing to do with what we in contemporary society know of races, i. e. Eurasian or African. In HackMaster, race simply refers to the fantasy species of your character.

Wizards of the Coast, however, did not carry on that sentiment into the D&D 3E they published, which is also interesting, I think. There is, of course, a biological definition of "race" that is synonym to "subspecies" (see here), so in that sense it is not necessarily wrong to use the term in D&D (or any other game).

What made it problematic, it seems, is the claim that categorizing a species into subspecies is somehow "racist", which is (at least!) highly debatable. If, as history teaches us, a categorization like that is used to argue some sort of superiority for a subspecies, it is plain stupid, wrong and objectionable. And very dangerous. For obvious reasons. But that has nothing to do with the idea of categorization itself, which can be quite useful. Also for obvious reasons.

So what's the case we can make here? The hobbyists that created D&D used "demihuman races" as the distinction to categorize their "fantasy species". It created some adjacent terminology, and they never changed it across editions, although it is noteworthy that they cared to define it properly in the AD&D 2E (and the HackMaster 4E, which just revised 2E).

It is, in a sense, legacy terminology, but never "abused" to paint some sort of "hierarchy of subspecies" (as far as I'm aware of). Instead, it is merely terminology for a categorization that became necessary as the game grew and evolved, and was done with good intentions and taste throughout. Again, for obvious reasons, as they wanted people to like and use the options they got. Like in: all people interested in the game, with no reservations.

Anyway.

Now "mixed races" are banned ...

... for ideological and emotional reasons, as far as WotC are concerned. This is, at the very least, nothing but big mouthed pandering or ill adviced marketing and social media politics. It is not about bringing the game forward, as it should be, but about virtue signalling. I'll say that as unbiased as I can. Of course, it is their business and they can do what they want. But categorization is useful, as we have learned, and this move should be catgorized for what it is: done in ill will.

In a way it shows the same contempt WotC showed with their attempt to change the OGL. It shows the same lack of competency, too, imho.

[source]

Why do I think that, you ask? Because compromise would have been so easy, but wouldn't send "the message". If they'd been "Language is important, and since the term "race" is so loaded and convoluted these days, we decided to use the more precise term "species" instead so all of you can keep enjoying playing your half orcs and half elves!", or something along those lines (and to give but ONE obvious example!), it'd barely been worth news.

Instead, it would have helped bringing people together (would be my guess, anyway).

It's just not what they wanted to do. They wanted to put fuel into a divide that already went to far as it is. People should build bridges again and come together, not wallow in resentful hatred against some idolized opposition. If we are able to find and cultivate what unites us, we'll be able to overcome our differences.

Easy as that.

And you can't tell me that they did that stunt out of the good of their heart. That's just not where those ideas come from. War is not peace, slavery is not freedom, and ignorance is not strength, no matter how loud those people claim to have good intentions when supporting ideas like that.

And if you think that's a bit far fetched, to go from saying it is "racist to have mixed races in a game" to full blown 1984, I'd urge you to think again. They keep saying that the origins of the game are racist and misogynistic (among other things), despite all the good the game did. Despite all the science, even, that exists today, pointing out how it brings people together, how it helps personal growth, how it helps mentally. Tbh, all this posturing completely goes against common sense.

There is no healthy rationale behind it. There never is behind revisionism, which this is, because what they are saying is that chosing that term "race" to begin with was out of hatred by the original creators. Maybe they'd say it was "subconscious" or whatever, but it doesn't change that thinking like that is small minded, to say the least.

ANYWAY.

A horse is a horse, of course of course ...

I don't know if you are aware of this, but horses and donkeys, two distinctly different species, can have (infertile) offspring. If a male donkey mates with a female horse, that hybrid is called a mule (if it's the other wa around, that's called a "hinny", which is somehow cute, I think). Different species, some sort of outcome.

Zonkeys are a thing, too! [source]

A little closer to home, the same is said for humans being able to reproduce with Neanderthals (leading to their extinction, is one theory). Which leads to another well established fact: we used to live with other humanoid species here on planet earth, and not that long ago, too. Not only Neanderthals, but it also had Denisovans and some smaller hominid groups. We interacted with them, and I believe some of our oldest stories are proof of those interactions (which is neither here nor there, but still interesting to note).

What I'm saying is, there is no reason to say this phenomenon of interspecies reproductional activity cannot exist or talked about. To be completely honest, I'd say, if we were to encounter aliens, people would find ways to fuck them before anything else. That's just who we are.

So if you don't like the term "race", use subspecies or species and be done with it. Nothing I wrote here is "newly established science" or something like that, it is no secret knowledge. The information is right there, publicly available. Why act as if a decision like that wouldn't need checking what can be gathered about it?

No need to make a stink.

Will this hurt the hobby? Fuck if I know. There are enough alternatives to D&D out there, published by companies that don't feel the need to act like WotC. Will it hurt the brand? More likely, if bullshit like this keeps mounting up. And that is a shame on multiple levels. For one, as I said above, this hobby of ours should be about uniting people with good intentions, but D&D is more than that, culturally speaking, and the little history it has should at least be looked at with the benefit of the doubt, if not heralded for the good it did.

Tainting that history by implying some sort of moral superiority and to gain, what?, social credit?, well, I think that's something reprehensible. Especially if it's done by people that have proven to be morally suspect, as WotC did on multiple occasions in the last couple of years (not just recently).

Final thoughts

Not sure how to end this ... I recently came to believe that there is too much anger all around. People dug in and aim to hold their positions. There's also a lot of negativity around, and I don't know how you guys feel about it, but I just can't take it anymore. So I'm pointing this out as bad behavior to encourage people to do better. Not that I believe that anyone addressed here will read this, or care about those things, for that matter.

No.

The point of the exercise is more along the lines of reminding anyone reading this that we worked hard in the last couple of decades to create a culture of exchange, understanding and personal growth. We have an obligation to check what can be assumed as useful interaction, and what should be considered disruptive or even harmful. We already know a lot about these things, we don't have to start at the beginning with every dilemma that presents itself.

As a matter of fact, why not try to be a bit more mindful in general? I know I struggled with this in the last couple of years, for sure, and I know it'd help me to find more peace.

Easter is traditionally the time for new beginnings, so with this I'll renew my efforts to be a positive force where I can. If you read all of this, I appreciate you. If you have any thoughts about my take here, you are welcome to share them.

[source]

Currently reading: Penetration by Ingo Swann (a Why Files recommendation, and so far a good read ...)

-----------------------------------------------

If you liked any of this, you could go and check out my offerings over on drivethru. The latest is part three of the blog anthology I'm working on. Part four is already in the works, and I aim to offer a PoD of the first three books as well. Soon ...

REVIEW: Of Dice And Men

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Sun, 05 Mar 2023 17:53:00 +0000

Let's try a new thing. It will be a variety of "I read a book and talk about it", the difference being: I'm not doing it alone. My good friend Eric Diaz over at his (fantastic and fantastically productive) blog Methods & Madmen will read the same book and we will cross-post and talk about it. We've decided four books to start with (two of which offered by Eric, two by yours truly), all connected to the hobby one way or another. We talk about it, and see how it goes. The first one will be "Of Dice And Men" by David M. Ewalt, a book I wanted to read (and like) and now can't make my mind up about ...

[source]

Character Sheet (what are we looking at?)

The "revised and updated" softcover version Of Dice And Men (ODAM, 2013) I perused clocks in at 285 pages, 32 of which are afterword, notes, acknowledgements and an index. Formally this book is done well, good formatting with no serious hickups in the editing (one word he kept repeating rubbed me wrong around the third time it was used, but that's all that comes to mind right now). Just from handling it, it's a nice book, pleasant to read, even.

Another positive observation up front: Ewalt consistently writes "role-playing games", with the "-" (the hyphen) connecting "role" and "playing" ("role-playing" is a verb, therefore the hyphen is correct). It is a conscious choice, because when quoting other sources, he uses their writing, which can be (and often is) different. I applaud that.

Somehow I care about this more than about if "gamemaster" is possible or not. If "storyteller" is possible, "gamemaster" sure as hell should be as well ... interestingly enough, Wikipedia's respective entries go by "role-playing game" and "gamemaster", so I feel vindicated.

Anyway, moving on, stated mission of this book is to offer "an enticing blend of history, journalism, narrative, and memoir", which is a tall order for 253 pages, but not impossible.

David M. Ewalt was an editor and wrote Advertisement for Forbes magazine, it seems, so there is nothing to gather about the guy's opinions whatsoever ... Not hating here, it's a plus in my book that he keeps a low profile, although writing advertisement is a stance in itself, right? His bubble is, according to his homepage, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and Forbes. His job now is editor over at Gizmodo, again also writing advertisements ...

Good money, for sure, but it takes a special mindset to work in circles like that, and it shows in the book. At least it explains a lot how he constantly feels the need to denigrate his fellow gamer nerds (a group of gamers is a "stink" now, is it?) while telling everyone how great the role-playing is he's involved in is, implying his approach is more artsy (or whatever you'd say to "safe face" in front of an audience that'll judge you for the company you share but think you shouldn't).

Unfortunately that's a strong theme in the whole book and we will have to revisit it throughout, I'm afraid.

So this already is a mixed bag. I'll be honest and in-depth about my findings (and feel the need to state this because I feel it won't be a nice review in the end). Is this really "the story of D&D and the people that play it"? Let's find out!

In-Game Analysis (how does it play out?)

I will go through this roughly and from the beginning. Re-reading the introduction for things I could say about that already has me more critical about the text as reading it casually did. So keep that in mind. It nicely connects with the impression the book left with me, but we'll see if I'm able to connect those dots ...

The introduction it is, then. It seems to be the part of the book where the author aims to establish himself in the hierarchy of gamers as the "DM" of this book. As the moderator and the authority, if you will. It begs the question if the author just felt it necessary to build a defense against some hostile grognards, or if he just addresses the necessity of it.

I completely understand the urge, especially if one is used to write stuff published online. In a book, however, it appears to be a bit too defensive. I will not be very detailed about the structure of the rest of the book, but this introduction checks so many boxes already, a closer look at it helps to form and understanding how the book is written.

The introduction is titled "I am not a wizard" and starts with addressing the "hardcore fantasy role-playing gamers in the audience". The mainstream audience can just skip it and start reading. The text then switching to chum up to those "hardcore gamers" alluding that the "muggles" are gone now and we can talk business.

That's just a couple of sentences after claiming he isn't a wizard, so it is already a strange move to use a Harry Potter quote. But that's not even what bothered me (although I'm thinking now he meant not a "Wizard from that coast"?). It is the term "muggles" I object to, as it is abrasive while ALSO painting a less favorable picture of what he implies "hardcore gamers" think of the dirty masses.

It is divisive and I don't like that at all, especially when considering that no one reading that first paragraph would just skip it, so those "muggles" will read at least as far as to read being classified like that. It's not even cute, it's just cringe (if I'm generous).

[source]

Moving on. Next, authority needs to be established. It reads like he wants to be the big man among equals, pointing out that he mostly uses 3e, because that's what he likes and plays, so if people think they need to criticize that, they can go and shove it up their asses (that's actually what he says ... if you don't believe me, just go and read that part on amazon).

Again, the only reason to be aggressive about this is that he expects some sort of backlash in that regard OR wants to establish hierarchy with a reader he thinks needs subjugating, because just stating that 3e is what he's playing now and what he likes would have been plenty enough.

Now imagine what someone would think reading that, who doesn't identify as "hardcore gamer" ... they'd have to think this sort of chest bumping must be necessary for some reason, which directly feeds into negative stereotypes already established. I'm so tired of shit like that.

Ewalt goes on and talks about how his session reports will at times not follow the rules of the game they played, but might take creative license in that regard to make it work in the book. First of all: obviously, duh. Secondly, that's not even how the session report sections are written to begin with, so why bring it up?

Feels like the "I'm the author here, and that's my skill, so shut up"-kind of way to, furthermore, establish authority over what he seems to perceive as a hostile reader? Again, painting what picture?

In closing he writes:

ODAM, p. 2

You read that as I do? Now he's protecting the "mainstream audience" from those evil grognards while snubbing the gamers as having "failed" in reading this properly.

But did they? The book claims to be "the history", not "a history", not "a short history", it's definitive. Nothing in the marketing actually gives any hint of this book being anything else but what it claims to be.

Anyway, he's (again) hinting the reader to go somewhere else. The last sentence, then, aims to cement his authority and advises to play it nice. It's funny, but if someone about participating in a game came at me as aggressive and divisive as that, I'd laugh them in the face if they ended it with "be nice to each other, this is a friendly campaign". Textbook passive-aggressive behavior, I'd say, and I don't care for it one bit.

This could (should?) have been done way more amicably. Easily. As it is, it starts the book off on the wrong foot, and every time he puts himself in relation to those (perceived) hostile readers, you'll see little stabs like that. Here's just a small selection:

says (as mentioned in the beginning) that others refer to a group of role-playing gamers as a "stink" (p. 56)*
explains how he's anxious to tell others since people have negative associations with the game, to a point where girlfriends leave (p. 75)
says gamers are a welcoming bunch, but then goes on to make an example how abusive gamers can be, alluding to something called "Arrogant Nerd syndrome", which isn't even a thing** (the story of Jonathan starts at p. 84)
actually, this is worse than "just" showing how "abusive" gamers can be, it's inverting who's the victim here by saying that gaming should be a "safe haven" for nerds, but ostracizing them is understandable, because they can be, after all, difficult people ... and that's a shitty move***
he also dedicates three chapters talking about aspects of the hobby he doesn't like: traditional war-gaming, traditional role-playing and LARP, and I don't think he's giving them a fair shake just because it's not his thing ... more shitting on fringe aspects of the hobby

Let's leave it at that (see the footnotes for the venting). As I said above, it's written well enough, but what's showcased here is also evident in the whole book. Little stories and hints that seem innocent if encountered alone, but accumulate to something where the sum of the parts is uglier than the single encounters. A stink. Ha!

[Source]

Honest to god, I started reading this book to my wife, who's not a nerd at all, and she did not care for the tone of the book. I'm saying, it's not just me and it is important, imo, to highlight this aspect of the book before going into other aspects of it.

So what else is there to talk about? The history sections are excellent, from the very beginning of the idea of cooperative play in history, via early war gaming roots to the first conception of the rules that would become D&D and how that went viral in the seventies. All of that framed by Ewalt's gaming experience and intersected with gaming reports from when he started playing again (a D&D 3e campaign in a vampire apocalypse setting).

Mixed into that we get some D&D quotes, learn about some of the great minds of the hobby, now and then. Anecdotes, quotes from interviews ... Good show, and he runs strong with that until page 172, when Gary Gygax dies. After that, the book loses steam considerably, most of all because the history part of it is basically neglected. We learn how TSR fared after Gygax' departure, and how all of that ended in TSR being sold to Hasbro, but it's basically bullet points of names and dates.

It's just not where the development of D&D ended, or the cultural influence of it. It's just where the writer stops doing what he did well in the first three quarters of the book. We get more of the session reports and quotes and anecdotes, but even there Ewalt'll shift focus and introduce new stories. It doesn't always work, and that last third drags on until the author describes his pilgrimage to the origins of D&D and helps us see through his eyes what all the famous locations are now, which was a nice touch.

Beyond that, we get lots of fan-boying and shilling for WotC and the development of the D&D 5e, which I didn't care for. So, yeah, that's basically what you'll find in the book, without going that much into detail.

Awarding Experience Points (is it any good?)

A book can read well, but transport horrible ideas. Or better yet: it can hide terrible ideas behind a casual tone and a good reading flow. Not that ODAM is in any way, shape or form offensive, but it is "politically correct" while being uncritically vague and even favorable towards WotC and their business practices to a degree where boring just ends up being a vehicle for, well, advertisement or at least craving endorsement.

And sure enough, there are plenty of examples in the text where WotC is being presented favorably ALTHOUGH there is something to be said about the business practices of Hasbro and WotC in 2013 when this was published (the OSR was thriving back then for good reasons).

If not written in favor, that part of the history of the game is actually not present at all, instead we get a reference to another book for checking out the decline of TSR and nothing but praise for WotC "rescuing" D&D and moving on with the brand. No word on the counterculture movement and success of the OSR and the revival of the old editions ... Especially since he's obviously aware of "old gamers" and "edition wars" (as it is evident in the introduction).

And you don't have to be a "fan" to recognize this, but you have to mention it to cast a complete picture. WotC felt pressured to go back to those old roots because people turned away from 4e in troves.

At least Ewalt is honest about being an "ally" of the company and quite happy to support their drafting of 5e. He wants to be in on that action and is happy to be recognized as a "fan" by WotC. Even gets an invite, or so he writes.

All of that is problematic, in my view, as it goes against journalistic integrity to be biased like that, and "journalism" was claimed to be part of this "enticing blend". No xp for advertisement or networking framed as "journalism", I'm afraid (0/5).

[source]

History next. Those passages I enjoyed a great deal. It's well researched and cleverly put together. Lots of interesting trivia. The early years of the hobby sure as hell make for a great story, the good writing puts it to the next level.

But there is a huge stylistic shift after roughly 170 pages. The whole interplay between talking the home campaign (the narrative/memoir part) and the history of the game falls flat. The history part all of a sudden gets rushed and the home campaign gets neglected as well. With what is left, we go as fringe as talking about LARPs while important transition points in the hobby get ignored entirely or just mentioned very briefly.

The last 80 pages are full of odd choices like that, and I get the impression that the author didn't have the stamina to go it all the way (which would have ended in a far superior book, imo).

See, you can make fringe excursions if the main text has enough meat to carry a little extra context. This is well illustrated in chapter three, when Ewalt's talking about legacy war gaming (although I did not care much for the retelling of those battles). But when all the interesting bits fall flat (for instance, how the game developed beyond Gary's involvement), we are left with a boring mess of praise for Big Corp, at least three different session reports and an overall text that goes nowhere until it ends with a pilgrimage to something that isn't there anymore.

I have to admit, the end works for me. The whole idea of the tying the book together like that is nice, and my guess would be that it came up pretty early in the writing of the book. However, there are at least 150 pages missing, and that's a shame. Still, what's there is great (4/5).

Gygax, making history again ... [source]

Memoir and Narrative, now, are interwoven to form the skeleton the history is presented on. I liked bits of that, didn't like others. As with the whole book, it is all crafted by a skilled writer, but I still felt it lacking at times, especially when Ewalt tries to be non chalant about not liking his fellow gamers (the stink, it's an addiction, all being welcome means there are abusive people ... but I'm repeating myself) or blatantly paints an uncritical picture of those currently owning the game (WotC).

That said, I did like the idea of structuring the whole book that way (not the negative parts, but the private aspect of it). It works well until it falls short 172 pages into the book. And when he not tries to paint himself as "the gamer that isn't a gamer anymore but then falls prey to the addictive elements of it again and now plays a far more sophisticated version of the game", it is quite the engaging read.

Even the session report sections work most of the time. Again, until they don't because they have to carry the book in the last third while adding several additional new narratives.

Using this memoir/narrative angle, the book mostly manages to paint a picture of what the game can be and what its elements are in almost all dimensions (the roots, the social dynamics, how it plays, ...), and that's good, although not fully realized and with the caveats already mentioned (3/5 each).

Nice ass, though! [source]

In closing ...

When all is said and done, this is not "the" but "a story of D&D and the people who play it". The historic part is interesting and I wish there would have been more of that and not just the pre-history and the first 20 years or so. Our cultural dialogue with D&D is not over yet, as the latest WotC fuck-up about the license of the game gave ample evidence to gawk at.

Writing a 250 pages book (with only a third of that actually being about the history, if you take away the memoir/narrative parts!) and claiming there'd be no room to explore the history of D&D after Gygax left TSR just to avoid shedding a light on some "problematic" truths regarding Big Businesses Ewalt likes to associate with, is just bad style.

So how should we end this? Is it a good book in my opinion? Yes and no. There are so many shortcomings, masked by a well crafted book that reads well enough to actually work, that it comes down to a meager 2.5/5 (tendency towards the 2, after taking as close a look as I did just now).

The history part that is done, is done well and I enjoyed reading those passages. Learned something about the early history of the hobby, too. The rest was engaging enough for the first two thirds of the book and the last chapter.

What left a sour taste in my mouth was the blatant adulation for WotC and the constant (somewhat underhanded) misrepresentation of most the people that actually play those games as undesirable company. Add to that the missing history of the game after Gygax left TSR and a weak last third with a somewhat strong ending that would have needed a bigger book to work properly.

If that sounds like something you could stomach, you can sure go and get that book.

Let's see what Eric's saying about it (we coordinated publishing, but didn't read each others take ... what fun!): follow me there.

This has always been true ... [source]

* He just came up with it, btw., or at least I couldn't find an easy reference for it. People call their spouse "stink" or relatives, but not a group of nerds, as he implicates. At least not as wide spread as he'd make "us" (assuming a main stream reader? pleasing the WSJ buddies?) believe the term is.

** Try and google that, the only proper hits are referring back to his book, one making the (great!) point that he neglects talking autism in gaming while instead re-enforcing negative stereotypes again. Same pattern as with the "stink", all to make role-players look bad (or make it seem that they are perceived in a bad light). I think it's projection, but that's just my two cents.

*** I'll segue a bit into this in a footnote because I feel it's important: people are not socially awkward because they are assholes or abusive, it's because they are made feeling unwelcome and pressed into the fringes. And what happens in the fringes? Subcultures, which D&D is one of. Or was, it seems, given its popularity today. Anyway, point being, I associated with another subculture back in school, in Germany: the punks. And those had been REALLY socially awkward. For the same reasons. To now go and act as if those phenomena are just direct results of ones conduct instead of symptoms of something far more difficult to tackle (social dynamics of bullying and hierarchies and whatnot), is insincere. At best. "My people" have been excluded and ridiculed for a long time now, what Ewalt does implicates he's more like the people that didn't get along with nerds to begin with ... I wrote about this some time ago in detail, see Nerd Pride and Pop Culture going Full Circle.

In Defense of AI Art (the drawing kind ...)

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 18:53:00 +0000

Calm down, no one is being attacked here. I come in peace. Just one thing up front: it is not theft. Now, hear me out! Whoever came up with that sure knows how to do ~~propaganda~~ marketing. At least that's where tactics like that come from. Please understand: "AI Art is Theft" as a catch phrase is what the literature calls "... [shifting] the focus of attention away from facts and information, and towards altering the context within which people act" (MINDSPACE document, UK government, p. 14). It means using shock and awe (for instance) to make you stop thinking about a topic and start acting in a certain way ... in this example, it negatively associates something with theft to elicit either guilt to avoid it or compassion to "fight" those "thieves". I don't like harmful shit like that and it makes me wary instantly.

Think, do the research, form an educated opinion, share it with others in open discourse. Repeat ... So I'm going to make my argument here, and you can read it or leave it. If you come to consider my points, I'd be happy to talk about it some more.

This post will be illustrated with results from InspiroBot. You brought this unto you. It also ended up being a bit rambling. Just a bit ... If I repeat a point I deem important, just nod and move on :)

Cui Bono?

That age-old question: who earns a pretty buck by having things go their way? Closely followed by: who benefits from halting this innovation for as long as possible? And (something you should ALWAYS ask yourself): who benefits from you not thinking about it? You get answers to those three questions, you get a good idea what's going on.

I'm going to say it up front: in my opinion, AI art does not infringe on meat space artists. Or to be more precise, not more than technology already does. That I can write these words here to share it globally instead of screaming them words against a cave wall cost at least one person a job: the guy I had to pay to walk to the next village to tell my story to the people there.

I know, I know, it is a pointed argument, but not without merit, I believe. Technology happens. Always did, does so more frequently now. Just imagine all the tools we already use. Do you know which of those already use some sort of AI to support an artist's work? Just type in "Adobe and AI" into a(n AI supported) search engine of your choice and get up to speed. They already do that with the visual arts and frame it as "tools to support creators".

And rightly so, but the uproar was about the implication where the machine learned to do what it does. Anyone exploring that for Adobe or Amazon or any of the big gorillas in the room? No, not that I know of. Midjourney and Stable Diffusion just painted a huge target on their back by being public about what happens, but it's been happening all along.

As a matter of fact, DeepDream by Google is already seven years old (went public 2015). You think that program did NOT learn from what it found online to look at? Someone suing google about it? Not that I'm aware of ... But there is more! How many apps on our phones already use AI to, for instance, alter pictures? Making you look older or adding a fancy filter to a picture? If AI was used, what do you think that AI learned from to work towards?

I could go on and on. We are already knee deep in AI, for years now, full well knowing where it leads to. HAS to lead to. If you are a (visual) artist and NOT aware of what's happening and what the trajectory of that development is, you are among few. It has been known, witnessed, demonstrated and talked about. So what's the fuzz all about now?

Be like that? [source]

What's more, technology like that is a great tool for ALL artists. For one, those pictures have to be generated. You have to get a feel for how to formulate prompts, and it will take several iterations before you'll get something you can work with. Emphasis on being "work with", since those pictures often still need some work before you can even think about putting them in publications (which is ADDITIONAL work). That's a lot of steps compared to "I tell an artist what I want, they show some samples, we talk about it and it is done".

It is also work an artist could earn money with, as they should be very capable to use their skill to pretty up prompt results.

For artists themselves, it also is a great opportunity. Midjourney is dirt cheap. Even if they just go for inspirations and elements, I imagine they could speed up their workflow tremendously with AI art at their disposal. Actually, that is already happening! Still making their own thing, but the AI takes some of the heavy lifting ... a tool, just as Adobe put it.

And then you have another important aspect of this whole thing: all of a sudden lots of small artists and publishers are able to compete with mainstream aesthetics. I kid you not, for a small publisher like myself tech like that, for as long as it lasts, is a godsend. Although lots of work, it helps me giving my products the look I imagined for them but couldn't pay for (and I already do a lot, drawing just isn't my strong suit at all).

That whole argument that the AI learning from existing artwork is "theft" is faulty to begin with, actually, as it rests on the idea that it reduces future incomes because it "copies their styles". Or learned by "looking" at pictures posted online in some form of public setting. As pointed out before, no one did that with apps or whatever, but that's not even were I'm going with this.

The point I'm making here, is, that the same happens when I get an inspiration for a layout I saw somewhere else. No one is earning a dime when I do layout and writing myself, even IF I'm inspired by someone else. Which can't be helped, of course, because we constantly look at the outputs of others. Just as the AI, but even that's not the point I'm making here. What I was aiming at was that if I can't pay an artist, I will find ways around that. The whole public domain is full of material a creative mind could make use of.

(And yes, I know, I'm not an "artificial intelligence" but a "natural intelligence", so it is a bit different. Still, how much different should be a matter of debate in this context.)

It's also a lot more work than it sounds, but the opportunities and applications of the public domain (and open source in general) are (within their limitations) endless. There are fonts and pictures, millions of books and illustrations ... Everything used from the public domain has an active artist not earn money. Everything I can do myself has someone else not earn money. Is that all frowned upon now? No. But, obviously, the whole public domain and open source movement isn't very popular with people that are actually in a position to hurt them.

Keep that in mind.

Especially since all those AI art services under fire right now are deeply rooted in OpenAI, for instance (all using technology provided to the public via google, among other open sources). The point being, those services used publicly available technology to innovate to a point where they were able to create successful businesses with LOTS of growth and potential.

So established artists have some reason to grief, yes, but only because innovation changed their world (yet again!) and we have to adapt. That's stress, of course, but also a great opportunity for all that can make it work. So did printers not that long ago, for instance, when printing went digital. So did publishers when the whole DTP movement made Print on Demand such a success ...

I know you guys know that it happens all the time. What's different now? Nothing. It is the same players protecting their benefice. And who's that? Not the little artists trying to get by. Not even the big artists, as it has only benefits for them (imagine to be that good that your style is so recognizable, an artificial intelligence can produce work like that). Can't be them. And dead visual artists? Well, same for dead actors or writers ... new technology will revive them for our entertainment. It's inevitable.

As a matter of fact, IF AI learning could be traced to having learned from one specific artist, I doubt they would benefit more if it hadn't. In other words, if this is the future, you'd be better off if it's part of your legacy than if you are being scratched out of it, because this WILL shape our immediate cultural future.

But who really earns from using that technology?

Well ...

InspiroBot, reading minds again ... [source]

That comes pretty close to the answer of the first three questions right in the beginning. But there are more arguments to be made before we get there. Other than manipulation through psychological framing and nudging, there's another thing going on. If you check the Wikipedia page about Midjourney and the litigation connected to it, it'll lead you to a (rather level-headed, actually) article over at The Verge that basically makes all the points (see here).

You will find that it is THREE artists that are suing through a big law firm specialized in cases like that. And that they actually have a weak case, since their claim seems to be, for instance, that the AI stores those pictures, which it doesn't, and it has an open source/fair use angle plus an international aspect the court could not even begin to address.

We'll have to see how that turns out, BUT it is not a lot to begin with. And that's, to me at least, suspicious. We have seen a tendency in recent years to manipulate "the masses" via social media engineering into acting as Trojan corporate mouth pieces (of sorts), through psychological skullduggery explained, for instance, in that document I shared right in the beginning. We have learned that the "mainstream" media is complicit in this, to a huge extent (see the Twitter Files, for a really, really great example).

Not all voices online are equal. Some are bought or have a vested interest in following a certain agenda, some are more vulnerable to manipulation than others. Needn't go as far as arguing that kids, for instance, are one big group deserving more protection than we are giving them right now. There is VERY solid science about how to manipulate others into doing ... well, anything, really. Public, too! And yet, for some reason, we assume that social media is "just" an exchange of opinions? Even something where an event perceived as a widely acknowledged outrage might accumulate to something true?

No, it is used to earn money and influence. Or, the other way around, it's targeting your money and manipulating you.

So, I don't know about the intention of those three women going to war against AI art. It certainly helped them getting a profile. I also don't trust all the media attention this one got. Yes, it's all new and shiny an TROUBLED, but isn't it also pretty clear cut? What makes me skeptical the most is the perceived social media war drums, the cancel culture looking for new victims. It smells of social engineering. And who does that? Who earns the big bucks with technology? Who benefits from halting innovation forced by a couple of start-ups? Who does not want you to think about those things? Well, the conclusion is, in my opinion, the direct competition.

Not sure how true that one is :D [source]

DeviantArt makes a lot of noise, while working on their own version. Adobe, Amazon, Disney, everyone earning Big Money with media is looking for the money Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and GitHUB is not making because people get scared away or join the war path to fight those "thieves".

They also have the money, expertise and means to do so. Have been doing so for years, which is pretty evident by now ... so why assume they are not somehow involved? They are, or so I'd argue, the only ones benefiting from this NOT changing the media landscape as fast as it does.

Nowadays, in general, when I see an outrage like this online, my first impulse is to question it. It all became a huge battlefield of psychological warfare and propaganda in just a couple of years, and it is bad for all of us.

So who benefits? I tell you, it's not the little guy. We are, again, reduced to being pawns in a bigger game. Evidence for that is all around us, and it is a safe bet that it is the same machinations being at work here. If not that, than it is mimicking those processes, which is (arguably) just as bad, because:

It's the wrong attack vector ...

Here is the thing, given the huge potential of the technology we are discussing here, the whole discussion that is surrounding it is asking the wrong questions. Technological advancement is (at least) exponential until the innovations happen so fast, they might as well be happening all at once. At that point, the only arguments we as a society/culture will have about what's worth saving (or safeguarding) are those already anchored in our respective cultures/societies.

When that singular event, that singularity happens, the decision what happens next is out of our hands and only our legacy will be able protect us ... or damn us.

So at this point we know AI art will be perfect in a year or two, then films and books and comics, even computer games will be done by AI within, I'd say, the next 3 years. If that slow. The whole media complex: imploding.

That'll also mean that you can have AI programming utilities, it'll teach, it'll do medical procedures. It'll do, in the foreseeable future, ALL the work. We are at that point in time RIGHT NOW. The generation born into the world as I write this will see it in ruins or live to have no need to learn and build and care other than for prosperity. None of our institutions are prepared for that other than using force to conserve the (corrupted, it seems) established. Same goes for the so-called "elites". And the rest of the population seems properly primed and rigged to function under the old paradigms.

So this should be about the BIG QUESTIONS, right? Not some petty bullshit about "the AI looked at my picture" ... no, there are far bigger issues at hand. And yes, I do believe the noise about AI art to be smoke and mirrors. Another fake problem to keep the dirty masses disoriented, disorganized and at each others throat instead of taking a closer look.

As I said, there is, in my view, only one party with a huge interest in keeping it that way, and that would be the direct competition of AI art, and Big Money in general. Proof to the contrary, as far as I can see it, is fucking rare and whimsical at best. The implications are pretty clear: Big Money sees the opportunity to replace a (cheap but still too expensive) working force and just make more profit, with even fewer benefiting from it.

In a sense, they'll tighten and close the economic circle to keep anyone not being part of the inner circle already, out of it indefinitely. To that end, they buy and cheat their way through our institutions. Big Money ALREADY earns too much money to spend, printing new money every day like crazy. So much money, in fact, that a ridiculously small percentage of it is enough to buy EVERYONE earning a regular salary or less into submission with ease.

There's truth in this ... [source]

The cultural seeds have been planted, greed is a powerful motivator and deeply ingrained in a western culture that got rid of almost all values able to protect a culture from abuse. Education is so steeped with propaganda and manipulation now, they are already in the middle of auditing our cultural heritage towards the prevailing ideology. We've seen this only speed up, when it started is obscured in history already.

And sure enough, it all connects to how technological innovation is speeding up as well, challenging the existing order of things.

And sure enough, we already see signs of this on a global scale.

Here's what's happening and why ...

Every small business that works with artwork will sooner or later use AI art indiscriminately. I'm already seeing this happening here in Germany. It is just a tool and used as such by anyone not caring enough, even, what it looks like (and it'll be only a question of time until it will be perfect).

Chat GPT isn't challenged like we see with AI art, but already censored towards conformity (Midjourney, too, has limitations as to what can be created, and I think there's room for debate about that, too). There is a huge danger, imo (Kim Iverson has a good video on the subject here). The decisions what's right or wrong aren't a process of culture anymore, they are decided by those at the dials, following ideas not everyone agrees to (or should agree to, for that matter). Maybe even following ideas we don't want to be stuck with in the long run? But especially ideas we should have overcome a long time ago already.

Make no mistake, big money is already using this to make more money, and will do so more openly within a year. Elon Musk's (who also had a hand in OpenAI, btw) biggest investment in the last 6 months was into AI tools. This is coming, and it is coming fast.

If Midjourney, Stable Diffusion and GitHUB get thwarted or even destroyed by this, it'll all still happen, with even less access and heavier control by Big Money. We can say that from experience now, it's the pattern they thrive on. Again, look at how Adobe is setting it up. The only bone of contention with Midjourney etc., was to have those tools available for everyone and for a reasonable price.

You think Microsoft or Google would go a less greedy route? Adobe for sure doesn't, and Big Business in general seems to be very fond of some kind of subscription scheme where you keep paying until you die, ideally increasingly so and with debt as well.

So spare me the fake outrage, and start being productive about this. We'll desperately need an informed public very soon. The French are already restless ...

Fair enough ... or is it? [source]

And that's all I shall say

There is a recurring pattern in history that huge medial innovations lead to huge upheavals. It has always been that way, and maybe it cannot be avoided to be that way again or that we live to see it, but I'd urge readers to readjust their targeting a little bit. AI art is not theft, we are being stolen from all the time, we are being manipulated to believe that we have reason to hate each other instead of questioning who made us point that finger.

It is quite enough of that, I'd say.

You don't have to believe me when I say that social media phenomena like this are, more often than not, systemic these days, but the evidence is out there for everybody to find. We have open corruption in the highest administrative bodies of our western culture and it goes unpunished, for fuck sake. On a daily basis. Social media is geared to escalate shit, people are geared to get riled up like that, and those in power will use their possibilities to make happen what they see fit. Because they can.

So, just take a step back and think before riding into the next social media craze, all guns blazing. It's not all that it's made out to be. And fair enough, you can disagree with what I was writing here. I believe I made a good case, but fair enough. Allow me the courtesy to disagree with your take, then, and we move along our own paths. Works for me. Just stay positive about it all. And if you are an artist struggling because of AI art, let me tell you ~~it'll get worse for everyone soon~~ you'll be all right.

Actually, if you are the creating type, I really believe you will be all right. There's always something to do, always something to create, and maybe this development will wake people up to the truth that it is part of human nature to create. Not for all, but for some of us. And we should cherish that as a society. But if all fails, you'll have that drive at least and it will bring you joy. So yeah, it'll be all right and I'm sorry for your troubles. May you find the strength to overcome those difficulties.

One last thing. I am in contact with artists, and the reactions had been always the same: intrigued shock. Something between "I can stop doing that now" and "Uuuh, it's so great, how can I use it to do some wicked shit?!". I imagine it is the same all around.

Other than that, I've said quite enough about this already and I'll close with a couple of quotes and concepts for you guys to think about. First of all, I'll share the "Seven Tells of Cognitive Bias" as per Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame). The guy is a bit full of himself, in a insecure kind of way, BUT he's spot on in this, imo, so I'll share it (a short yt video about it can be found here). If this comes up in a discussion, it is fair to assume that the tells indicate that the person using it has no real grasp of the argument (describing some Rhetological Fallacies, of course, but that's unpopular and complicated).

SEVEN TELLS FOR COGNITIVE BIAS

Changes Topic (something like "You don't like X, so you can't understand Z!")
Ad Hominem (if all fails, people will get personal)
Mind Reading (saying something outrages, implying that you think that way)
Word Salad (if it doesn't make sense and can't be made sense of, it's most likely just gibberish to avoid defeat)
Uses Analogy Instead of Reason ()
Insists it's "complicated" and can't be summarized (basically the "I'm not a doctor." argument, which is bs, of course)
The "So ..." Tell (basically the Kathy Newman approach of misrepresenting your argument with something akin to "So you are saying [add misrepresentation]")

I'll close with a quote from a Terence McKenna interview I'm very fond of (his last recorded interview, they say, you can see it here). So fond, in fact, that I used it on the back of the RPG I published (ORWELL). It was as fitting on the back of that book as it is here:

"This is what it's like when a species prepares to depart for the stars. You don't depart for the stars under calm and orderly conditions. It's a ﬁre in a madhouse. And that's what we have: The ﬁre in the mad-house at the end of time." (T. M., 1998)

Here's an InspiroBot quote that came up, featuring a base element of ORWELL (the title being Leet Speak and all that), so it deserves a place here as well:

I liked that on for the Ø, obviously ... [source]

And with this, I'm done. I'll use the pictures I created in Midjourney for my publications, and I see no harm in that. I'll make a note of it, so people can decide for themselves if it matters to them. I have no way of influencing that decision. After all, it is just superficial garnishing and it should be about the content instead of petty bullshit. But yeah, limits of control and all that. I'd just as quick work with an artist (as I did in the past) or use public domain art or diy it, as best as I can.

Thank you for taking the time. Stay safe out there, friends, it'll be a bumpy ride.

Yeah, sounds about right ... an AI's dream [source]

Paradigms of the D&D Rules Cyclopedia (or: Staring into the Abyss)

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 14:19:00 +0000

It's February 2023 already and I'm (seriously!) way behind with everything I planned to have happen LAST year. That said, I'm getting there. No day goes by with not at least some progress. Could be more, maybe it SHOULD be more, but I'm content with how it is. I'm getting there. Point in case: I'm tackling the final hurdles in finishing writing on be67, that Weird Sixties RPG I'm aiming to publish as soon as possible (if I'm lucky, May 2023 ... I always seem to publish big projects around that time, wonder why that is). Those last hurdles, however, are those really tough bits where so much of the rules converges that lots of interacting ideas need visualization. Welcome to another episode of the ...

Parody of original cover, fair use for sure ...

[Short side note: it seems that it is safe right now to at least talk about our house rules of old D&D iterations, therefore I'll keep telling you that be67 will be a collection of my D&D RC house rules mutated into a complete game ... I'll still take care that it is very much it's own thing, which means pushing a couple of concepts I used a bit further than I originally intended. Not a big thing, and still very much compatible with everything D&D or OSR out there, but this post will look at the core of some of the concepts in the D&D RC and how they relate to my version of those concepts. As I keep saying: be67 will not be D&D, it'll be a retroclone mutant of the D&D RC.]

The Game, as we see it

OD&D was famously vague with its rules. So vague, in fact, that it was almost impossible to play RAW (Ruled As Written) if you didn't have the war gaming background Gygax and Arneson had. To be precise, if you weren't part of those war gaming circles Gygax and Arneson frequented, OD&D would most likely be a mystery to you. Something inspiring, for sure, but IF you were able to make sense of it somehow without that context, it'd most likely be with a very different understanding compared to what the original authors intended.

Tunnels & Trolls (1975) is the perfect example of how that could still manifest a beautiful and complete game.

As far as TSR was concerned, they had two venues to explore: one was revisioning the OD&D toward a version that was more clear in its rules (that'd end up being AD&D), the other was making the entry into this hobby easier (which was attempted with Basic D&D). It ended up creating two very distinct versions of what D&D can be, both based on that vague first iteration, both, in a way, distinct variations of the same themes, ideas and concepts.

Now, we are talking the D&D RC here, which is the end point of that second strain, and, if not vague, it ended up being just as convoluted and incomplete as that first game, just on a bigger scale. We always knew this, I think, but the beauty of role-playing games is that it is possible to "wing it" on almost every level of resolution. Nowadays, a skilled Gamemaster can GM a game with a very minimalist approach, no problem. They can also gain an (as in "one", not "the") understanding of a poorly explained game and make it work at the table.

As far as D&D is concerned, it means: the collective and documented experience of playing D&D in general makes for a great blueprint how to "summon" that kind of gaming experience. It is a paradigm:

paradigm (noun)
A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline. [source]

So mostly, playing the "idea" of the game will be close enough to the actual rules to make that approach work. But what's more: with a strong paradigm like we have with D&D and a little experience in playing it, it is easy enough to bridge what the rules might be lacking and still make it work. You get an idea where you have to end up, roughly.

In a way, the paradigm of D&D can take a lot of abuse before the game breaks (one could make the case that WotC did find that breaking point with 4E). It can also help masking some pretty major shortcomings in the rules ... which is something a dedicated collective hivemind processed and filtered most prominently in what the OSR was up until, say, 5 years ago.

What's more, while there never will be an official revision of the D&D RC, there for sure are retroclones rewriting and revisioning that game (Dark dungeon comes to mind, with its retroclone mutant Darkest Dungeon as an iteration moving away from D&D ... the latest version, combining both, can be found here). There are also tons of micro solutions to problems the rules pose and you can find them hidden all over the internet.

Some of it is about bridging gaps in the rules (perceived or not), some of it is about finding a true understanding of what all the numbers mean and how they relate ...

You want an easy example? Guns are a very specific and ignored problem in the D&D rules. At least I haven't seen any satisfying solutions to the problems guns bring to how the game is designed (the original solution, imo, was to circumvent the problem entirely by introducing wands and staffs ... but that's pretty unsatisfying to begin with).

Other good examples would be giant creatures and structural damage ... it is all there, in parts and pieces or as island solutions for specific monsters (I argued in the past that dragons give indications how we are supposed to create our own monsters ... see the argument made here).

[source]

And sure enough, all of this can be improvised in a narrative. No one would object to the idea that a dragon may just be able to do a lot of damage to structures, if it's able to bring the mass or firepower to do it ... That said, it'd still be nice to have a ratio behind it all. Not necessarily to apply it on every fictional building in a campaign, but because experience taught us that the game WILL break down for mid- and high-level games if those things need to be "winged", because characters could be that dragon (or its equivalent) and without rules to accompany that, it'll just get boring fast.

You see, all of those are problems hidden deeply at the core of the game, and if you were to write a game based on those rules, you are either forced to ignore them as well (the c/p approach of many a lazy game designer ...) or come up with a satisfying solution that suits the game. I keep saying: the D&D RC has an EPIC scope, but doesn't do it justice all the time. That can be a problem if you try to reproduce its results.

Here's another very specific problem: HD

The reason for this post is: I have no solution for this specific problem. Yet. All the pieces are there (as you will see), but I can't see a good way to condense all of this into core principles that work as a jumping off point for GMs new to the game (other than just doing the work and offering dozens of pre-made monster portfolios ... which would be a cop-out, obviously).

The problem is, many assumptions about how powerful monsters are rely on "legacy code". Some of it definitely derived from games like Chainmail, some expanded on through experience (you know it works because you threw it at a group and it worked), and build on that comes the whole rest you'll find in the D&D RC. There is no "behind the scenes" how the sausage is made, it's just a lot of sausages, ready for consumption.

Well, to be fair, it's not entirely true that there are no metrics at all to work with. There is an attempt to "balance" encounters in the RC, and it goes a little bit like this: it basically makes HD comparable with Level, which is a whole thing in itself, and not necessarily a tool of precision, considering that "special abilities" may be imbalanced to begin with. But anyway. So you take a group's total level and compare that to the "back engineered" HD of a monster (or NPC) to see how they relate. With that, you have a metric to asses how hard a confrontation MIGHT be (Tucker's Kobolds would be a great argument against that, but whatever).

Now, if the adjusted HD are, say, between 30 and 50%, it'd be a "good fight". As in, it'll tap into the resources a bit, it'll hurt a bit, but it'll most likely be a voctory, which is satisfying, and that is, of course, "good". 50 to 70% is, by that metric, "challenging", 110% (barely above what the characters bring to the table!) is categorized as "extremely dangerous".

D&D RC, p. 101

also D&D RC, p. 101

As I said above, it's not nothing. But the whole "adjustment" process is pretty much broken, and I have to find a way to make it all make sense in a way that would allow a GM to build a monster that'd be intentionally balanced from scratch and without much hustle. From what I can see (and, again, considering the scope), not even the math works out (as far as I'm aware).

Check it out. You take the base HD a Monster has. If there is anything added or substracted, it is basically rounded up or down. Then (also D&D RC, p. 101):

"[...] add half of the original Hit Dice figure for each power bonus. Power bonuses include:
• Each asterisk next to a monster's hit dice.
• Special NPC abilities.

For NPC parties, award a power bonus for each of the following conditions: 1) Everyone in the party has +2 weapons or better; and 2) There are spellcasters in the party. (Take the highest level of spells that may be cast, divide by two, then divide that result by the number of characters in the party, rounding up; the result is the power bonus added to the Individual Adjusted Hit Dice figure of every character in the party.)"

It's just ... okay? It'll give you a form of measure, I'm just not sure if I would trust it. As a matter of fact, I'd test that before believing it. Or rather, I'd have to see if it matches how I play it. Again, just from a game-within-the-game point of view, the Gamemaster is just as much a black box as the special abilities can be. I can bluff the players into making mistakes, just as a smart goblin would ... I will not lie or cheat, but I will have monsters and NPCs that'll give it a shot.

And there's the next problem: smarter monsters (than the base line), no change in xp range. Okay. At least there is some rules for it (D&D RC, p. 214). That whole chapter on changing monsters is inspiring, but not a lot of crunch, actually. Good ideas, almost no rules.

Size can be factored in, but it is a strange one, because changing the size of an EXISTING monster will alter its xp range and base HD exceptionally. Huge medusa, in an example, has HD 8+24, plus better AC, better to-hit, better saves, more damage! That'd be brutal ... and in no relation to other big monsters in the book? A big goblin like that would fuck up a normal orc, no problem (a 7 ft goblin would outmatch an orc with more hp, slightly better saves, more damage ... it's not much on that scale, but a lot when going bigger than that, as the Medusa shows easily).

That's not even all of it. Look at the Gargantuan entry for monsters (D&D RC, p. 177), compare them ith their counterparts and THAN do the math to see if it fits. It doesn't. The gargoyle is not that much larger (still L), but features 32 (!) instead of 4 HD and deals about 4 times the damage. That's a legacy monster, for sure. They just didn't bother to align it all.

There's more. As those stars factor in as "special abilities", it is interesting to check what the thinking was there, so off we go to the section in the book about xp (D&D RC, p. 128) ... only to find out that each * basically denotes some ability that can be used in combat. Nothing else ... unless it can cast, which automatically counts as "weaponized", no matter the kind of magic (also interesting, also unbalanced).

I don't really get the distinction anyway, as EVERYTHING can be weaponized. Their argument is "if it can fly, no *, if it can swoop in to attack, it gets the *". Not even defenses factor in (they say there could be exceptions, but they don't say what they are). And another "soft rule" added to that, is called "Modifying XP" (same page) and basically advises "if it's tougher than you thought, give more xp, if the characters walk through it, give less.", which sucks, as far as advice goes (nothing to work with, just taking space, also diminishing clever play).

See the problem with that? I do.

It is all connected to HD, but inconsequentially so. It's not connecting all the dots. If you have (optional) rules for balancing, apply them to everything, connect them with how xp are calculated and monsters are created. Make it click, revise all the monster entries. Do the work. As it is, the problem is addressed in three different chapters, offering 2.5 different solutions, with all the island solutions you can come up with in the monster section. There is a vague idea what that could mean, but not developed enough to produce monsters with other than "making them up", and riddled with inconsistencies.

And that's assuming they touched the proper dials here. HD is a good measure for attack matrices, but it doesn't translate well into the size adjustments: they have to use tricks here, but they are basically inflate the HD+x and then add a indirect to-hit modifier. At best, it's not a very elegant solution.

Want more? What about things like Morale? It is so crucial to be able to overcome monsters by scaring them away instead of having the whole fight, with all the risks and resources that takes. Doesn't that factor into how dangerous an encounter is? 10 HD, but runs away as soon as it sees blood? That shouldn't be a problem for a group of level 1 characters.

Or how about checking if the random encounter section creates results in line with the balancing idea? Don't bother, it doesn't (although it's the same fucking chapter!). It teaches a different lesson, however: there is no balancing encounters in the wild. There be dragons out there, and they don't care what level you have. And not all encounter end up in fights, AND the characters should not only encounter tougher foes, but should also learn the signs of such an encounter and how to evade them. It is all part of the game. Just different parts, offering different design philosophies EVERY TIME.

It's all kaputt ...

Let's say, a group's antagonist is a highly intelligent and very rich 2HD monster. Has the funds to give the group hell, and the smarts to be subtle about it. Could terrorize them for a whole campaign, no sweat. A real Moriarty (who might have higher HD, but needn't really in this context). If they caught him, the wizard of a high level group could take him out, bare-knuckle style.

If that would be the climax of a campaign ... xp would not rely on the enemy's HD, it'd be the creature's wealth AND all the challenges it threw at the group over the course of the campaign. Yes, all the monster xp gained, rewarded AGAIN (as per D&D RC, p. 127) plus the wealth.

And that's just that: with a shotgun approach like that, the moving pieces collected in between almost don't matter, what's important is how it is scaled towards the end of an adventure or a campaign so it doesn't overshoot all connected systems (like levelling and and so on). And even for that it has at least secondary safety measures. So D&D RC characters cannot gain more than one level for "an adventure" ...

Another side note: again, very weak with the terminology here ... What's an adventure? How about campaigns? What's if a normal session generates more than enough? What time of playing are we talking here? Say, a 12 hour session dungeon crawling (I do know people like that ... I sure was one of them when I was younger), all open-worldy, no story ... is that one adventure? Again and again just soft rules, ignoring the deeper, underlying structures.

And how unfair is that, if it occurred that you lose xp because of advancement? How easy is that to handle on higher levels? Say a group of high level characters drop a surprise round on a party of big bad dragons and take them out ... big haul, lots of xp, done in a days work. Why not? If you played long enough, you are bound to have some tricks and shortcuts collected for opportunities like that! Instead, nothing. The GM overshot and had to regulate ... fuck that.

What's more, say you just need a couple of hundred xp for next level, but you gain big time (like with finishing an adventure). Bad luck, chummy. You get one point short to gain the next level, everything beyond gets scrapped.

And there is yet another aspect: all the tools talked about here are about fighting monsters, but there is a shift in how xp are gained somewhere in mid-level range, where just killing and looting won't cut it anymore. The shift is away from combat and more towards actual role-playing.

There aren't enough dragons in the multiverse to advance even one high level wizard. Once your fighter needs 120.000 xp to gain another level, they'd rather have some drama where they can shine (good role-playing will gain a character 1/20 of what they need for next level, or in this case 6000 xp) than going for goblin genocide in the homeworld. Exceptional actions will net you another 1/20. If you aim for both, you'll advance every nine sessions, at least.

So. Many. Construction. Sites. So frustrating.

The D&D RC, if it where a bong ... [source]

Solutions: let's stare into that abyss a bit!

I could go on, but I won't. If you've read all the above, you get the idea. But how can I fix that for be67? What does it take to make it all work in unison? Cutting the "fat" here seems to be such a waste, although all of them are island solutions, there are some nice ideas throughout (obviously, duh). And my guess would be that it'd seem too one dimensional as soon as it all lines up into a pattern that actually leads to something like a coherent system.

The only thing I know is: I need that, for sure, since everything else is lined up already and this is the final piece. I cannot write my way out of that. So I won't. Lets take a look at the elements we have:

HD to have an idea how good a monster or NPC fights and how long it'll last (with the added benefit that the amount of HP also indicates level of maturity).
Damage output per successful attack (again, there is no rhyme or reason how that measures, but it really matters).
Saves are really important, since they are a great passive defense mechanism (no idea how to factor that in).
AC is there in the top five, but it just "is" in the rules (nothing to see here).
Morale, as described above, lots of moving pieces (no clue how they should connect).
Special abilities, which can be anything, but at least it is highly applicable AND we have an idea how they track.
Encounter challenge rating, not a good, but the best indicator we have how some of it at least connects.

What else? Treasure? Not necessary (although it factors in with xp). Number appearing? Well, that's a strange one, as it randomizes the balance rating. Maybe good to have a measure like that, but I think it might be a relic from dungeon generating tools that didn't make the cut for the D&D RC. So that's about it.

We can calculate which HD range relates to Total Party Levels in general, and (maybe) what outcome to expect depending on the Challenge Ratings. If you are aware of the sneak peak I shared of the book in my last post (NEG (blank), find it here), you can get an idea how there are additional measures that should make it easier to calculate and manifest a threat.

For one, a GM can track how dangerous the surroundings are, which maps nicely with the idea of a Challenge Rating. For the six Danger Scales presented in the NEG I'll go 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%, 100%, 120%. If you have the Total Party Level (TPL) as well as the Danger Scale (DS) and an Encounter occurs, there's already a lot to deduce from the available numbers. It just isn't that much of a help if you end up with one big number and a myriad of options how to resolve it.

I'm telling you, this will hurt a little ...

Say we have a group of 6 level 5 characters cruising in a DS IV kind of situation, that'd allow for encountering a (80% of 30) 24 HD entity. And the problem is: that could be ANYTHING. Even just reduced to the encounter table, there's so much to go with. I'm tempted to make it sort of a point buy system where the 24 (in this case) are a pool to buy all kinds of features, with some easy defaults to fall back on, if time's pressing.

It could be, however, information overload: would it be a good option to use a swarm, or one big fella? Maybe buy some damage options and better AC? So default is AC 9, reducing that would mean different costs for different numbers of enemies ... so that needs to be categorized. Single (one entity), skirmish (a division of the HD Potential) and mob (1 HD entities, all of them) encounters, maybe? At least that's what I did in ORWELL ...

Maybe it should scale a bit differently? Like, a single encounter should have the lowest AC default, skirmish encounters default a bit higher, swarm lands at 9. Easy. Default damage should be just as easily mapped with group size ... But having the option to buy shit with HD as the currency would mean it'll be reduced. You'd have to do THAT before deciding for group size, right? Right?!

[source]

Okay, so potential first, then group size, then the defaults (AC, Damage, Saves should be in there and Morale?), then using the Potential for specials. And that's it. Make it relate to the basic encounter key, give it something special, maybe dial a bit with the stats ... é voilà, basic encounter?

No no no ... Something's missing. Can't have the same defaults independent of the actual HD. Higher HD should have better defaults, right? So that needs to be done. Saves scaling HD like Level, maybe? Higher damages, maybe related to DS? DS could factor in all the time, actually. Still, that's a lot of information to decide on during a game ... And how would prepared monsters fit into this?

[source]

So we need to shift that paradigm?

Fifth attempt at this (I think). Anyway, had to put it to rest again for a couple of days to mull it over AGAIN. Here's the thing: they never cared to put it all together. In other words, the system I'm looking for, does not exist. The D&D RC is a tool box, consequently it doesn't amount to much until you do something with it. That can (and often will) mean we have to fill those gaps ourselves with the tools we like or our own solutions.

Which is good, as I can use something I came up with instead. It'll change the tone of the game a bit (compared to the D&D RC, that is), but only for the GM (which is another interesting observation, I think ... the game doesn't change much on the player side at all). So how could I go about this, then?

be67 already offers several frames I can work with. Encounters are themes and tropes a GM wants to see in an adventure, all of them geared and scaled towards an escalation (including clues a group might collect and stationary encounters they might explore). Characters are free to explore as they see fit and encounters are abstract enough to manifest independently of that.

Here, have an example! What we are playing now is a Narnia grindhouse feature where the group ended up looking for some lost kids in a Nazi occupied Narnia variant ... No talking lions yet, but we've only started. Anyway, the group enters through a portal and gets several directions to explore (hints to several stationary encounters). The first Encounter I roll is connected to the main plot: Nazis. As for what their motivation is, the Motivation Generator comes up with "A force of greed that is insane and aims for power". That's what I'm working with.

It is a Main Plot Encounter, so the characters should get a chance to learn something about what's going on here. I'm going through the stationary encounters, and there is a frozen lake with a mystery that the group will see soon in the distance. "insane greedy grab for power" sounds to me like they are taking something powerful they shouldn't, maybe in a place they shouldn't (very movie-villain like, I might add). I decide it'll manifest as a mining operation on the frozen lake. Those Nazis are cutting huge pieces of ice out of the lake and something is trapped in those pieces they carry away!

It was clear that they'd end up seeing the lake soon, because of their decisions. Encountering the mining operation fit that perfectly, imo, so I went with it. That same result on a different stage might have had very different results with the same encounter and motivation rolls, but should have covered the same themes just as well: greedy Nazis doing insane shit for power ...

Another narrative encounter might have been more benign or challenging or threatening, so what would have happened then on their way to the lake would have manifested very differently. That way you gain huge variety in encounters, but themed and with some escalation systems to forward the plot as the characters figure out what's happening (one way or another).

Anyway, so plot and stationary encounters come with a "Danger Scale" (as mentioned above) that alters how powerful those encounters are and changes as the characters interact with them (clearing a dungeon, for instance, would reset that stationary encounter to a DS II (default) or a DS I even). As far as "balance" is concerned, the Total Party Level (TPL) gives indicators what's how tough on a group.

I'd take that, but modify it to adding all of that up (Levels and HD from supporting NSC) and then taking a tenth of that as base line. If that produces fractions (.1 to .9, obviously possible), round down but keep that fraction in mind.

Danger in be67 is scaled from 20% of that TPL (very easy) to 120% (very hard), just like they indicate in the RC, but in steps of 20 % to align it with the DS. That tenth of a TPL is calculated easily enough, to see what HD Potential (HDP) that amounts to in a specific DS, just multiply that number with 2 ( for the 20% or DS I), 4 (40%, DS II), 6 (60%, DS III) and so on. Easy enough and actually quite fast, I'd say.

Now a GM has to decide what's needed in that specific situation. If it's less than what's actually available, it can well be improvised as long as the numbers aren't adding up to something more or way less powerful than indicated by the HDP of that encounter. Other than that, there will be rules to use the HDP to its full, well, potential.

The next thing that needs deciding is the size of the encounter. Is it a single beast/NPC/entity? A "skirmish" (which, for be67, means a group with the upper limit of character group plus DS)? Or a "mob" (which would describe a number of entities above the number of characters in a group + DS)? As a situation is already on hand, that should be easily to decide on the fly.

Mob rules in effect! [source]

While the TPL and the DS with the narrative and motivation generator results give you a target area (HDP) and a rough idea what could happen (group size, some elements of the encounter as well as a "stage"). Once the smallest HD unit of that encounter entity is defined, you also gain a couple of insights in as far as HD already determines how capable a monster/NPC/etc. is to hit something. We also already have guidelines for what HD can mean generally, as it nicely tracks with character levels.

Something like that will give a GM a base line to work with, as far as AC, Damage, Saves and Morale are concerned. What it needs, then, is comprehensive tables to make that information easily accessible. Done. A GM that knows if it'll be a single, a skirmish or a mob encounter and what HD a single of those entities will have, will just as fast have the basic default values needed to make it a fight.

As a cherry on top, that fracture from the TPL tenth calculated in the beginning, that can easily translate into that HD bonus we all know and love from D&D monster entries (+1, +2, and so on).

If you are GMing on the fly, this "fast lane" approach will help you immensely, but there is more ...

Introducing Builds & high complexity Encounters

Following the above, you'll see that the numbers a GM is working with at any given moment are moving targets, in flux until needed in a specific situation as all parameters may change quickly during play (DS changes, characters gain allies or explore alone, and so on).

The easiest way to alter those spontanious numbers quickly, is to provide a GM with what I call "Builds" or "Monster Builds" in be67. It is basically a collection of alterations that add variety in the base numbers (higher or lower AC or Saves and all that) as well as special abilities, combat tactics, treasure and even weaknesses.

That, then, is just thrown on the numbers a GM has come up with. Instant goblin soup. Or that werewolf you just needed. Or aliens, because why the fuck not. Builds is what GMs prepare for their adventures (think: grindhouse features), but are just as easily provided in the equivalent of monster manuals (and be67 itself will feature its good share of examples as well ...).

HDP will be a general guide what's possible or recommended here, but that's just to not overpower an encounter by accident and should formulate nothing more than an upper limit. Anything below that threshold should be fair game.

To get REALLY deep n dirty into the rules, be67 will also provide tools for GMs to create detailed builds themselves. It'll provide a GM the dials needed to have a somewhat balanced build to throw at all suitable TPL. It introduces weaknesses (blind, small, stoned, incestous, animal or plant, stuff that'd impede an encounter somewhat) and gives a coherent list of special abilities and combat tactics for inspiration, as well as guidelines to implement attributes, skills and other character traits for monsters and NPCs.

And that's it?

That's it. GMs get three grades of resolution to manifest ALL encounters the game provides as well as all the tools needed to DIY all aspects of it. With this, if it isn't written already, I feel confident enough to say that its now conceptualized to a point where it just needs to be written.

Is this still B/X D&D? I'd say be67 will produce similar results to a degree that it all stays highly compatible while doing something else entirely (like, being weird in the Sixties and introducing lots of GORE!). If you where playing it towards a more balanced version of the game. As far as the D&D paradigm I described above goes, I'd say that if you were to design a game like that from scratch nowadays, you don't (well, I don't) have the luxury of it not making sense. In my opinion.

The only aspects new rpgs need that MAY gain a distinct advantage against their (overwhelming) competition, would be compatibility and/or coherent designs. Coherent enough, at least, so that an aspiring GM could transcend the rules to a degree that allows for a complete DIY approach. If you can throw it at everything and do everything with it, chances are that people that bought it to at least read it, will get something worthwhile out of it.

Hence the headache of making this work as good as possible.

That said, I hope I could also show that the D&D RC is more than that one approach I chose to build my designs on. There is way more, and that's a good thing. In a way, having it being so "patchwork" and incomplete is part of the appeal of the D&D Rules Cyclopedia. It draws you in easily enough (playing early levels works like a charm, with enough material all around to make it even easier), and when you get to a point where you find some inconsistencies, it invites you to look deeper and engage with it even more that way.

I wonder if that imcompleteness is one of the secrets of its success, actually starting with OD&D, which (as I alluded to in the beginning) was just as incomplete (and inspiring), but for other reasons. Is it, even, the source of that paradigm I was talking about above? Something worth pondering on, I presume, but maybe impossible to replicate in a modern rpg?

As for be67, I'm happy how it shapes up. If nothing else, it is what my house rules look like as a full game, and it is what I use when I want to play a game like that, so it'll be handy to have around. But it is also a (hopefully) comprehensive deconstruction of early D&D (as you see above), so it may have value as that as well. Compatibility is the third important aspect, I think.

Structuring monster and NPC generation like seen above, it not only makes all monster manuals out there fair game, it is also quite the fit for the great systemless monster generators that managed to get my attention (my good friend Eric Diaz' great Teratogenicon and James Raggi's fabled Random Esoteric Creature Generator come to mind ... I'm sure that's just the tip of the iceberg), if more inspiration or just more meat on them bones is needed.

Anyway, this ended up being a long one again. I appreciate everyone reading this one to the end. Thank you for tagging along as I tried to sort this out for me, and I hope you took something away from joining me in this deep, deep dive into the machinations of the D&D RC! Maybe it'll also help gaining a bit of interest for be67. Either way, know you are appreciated.

Latest version of the cover ...

Revisions Part 1: The D&D RC was never complete or finished

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 15:21:00 +0000

WotC tries to be a moving target in a bullet storm right now. Whoever thought it was a great idea to ACT as if a document that needs recourse to legal advice can be open to public review just by calling it a "playtest" to associate it with some sort of development process in gaming, must think gamers are GULLIBLE enough to actually think they are involved that way and not just shut up. And if you did their survey and believe it'll have any value to WotC, then I have a bridge to sell you might be interested in. In other words: revision your work away from that bullshit. I'll do just that!

Edit 28JAN23: I stand corrected, and I'm proud of all the fans standing up protecting D&D. Good show! The dragon is sleeping again ... I'll just say that we have no way of knowing if they actually looked at the surveys. It's actually still a bit ridiculous to assume they did, as what they are saying now is EXACTLY mirroring the original first response: the OGL 1.0a cannot go without lots of hurt for WotC. That has been clear from day 1. To claim now it's the survey from last week, well, it's disingenuous. Either way, it is the result that counts! Big Corp still sucks :)

I never used the OGL

I always found it suspect that something that isn't protected by law (like rules) needed a license to begin with. A lot of this is lawyer speak (think: smoke and mirrors) to widen the grey area for the corporation to act in, and that was pretty obvious from the beginning. If you make it your own, it is, by the same logic, your own and someone else may rewrite it and use it just the same. Them's the rules ...

Now, the main problem with Big Corp thinking in this very special situation is: they want to deviate from what they claim "stewardship" for (a term that only came up just now, and it is ludicrous to believe something like that might be compatible with a hyper-capitalist, neo liberal locust-think), well, they want to deviate just enough to act as if they are selling something new while keeping the old barred from any further use. The illusion of infinite growth colliding with the open source mindset ingrained deep into the original game and its first couple of iterations.

WotC be like ... [source]

We have seen over the years how they tried to mutilate the original game to get some resemblance of the D&D theme park they are trying to have you pay for ... forever and ever. This latest stunt is a reminder not only of the incompetent greed involved in this whole affair, but also of what your worth as a customer is with these guys. Shut up, do as your told and pay for it, too, while you are at it. It is not about "stewardship", it is about interacting commodities (and yes, we are also commodities in this regard ... for them, anyway).

So I avoided the waters those sharks frequented, and that included avoiding their OGL. What I did, however, was licensing Monkey Business with Labyrinth Lord, and they are licensed via OGL1.0a (as far as I know). So that's still protected under some legacy rulings. Or whatever ... Still, MB needs a revision anyways, and with be67 as far done as it is now, that revision will be a conversion to my own game.

About the RC being unfinished ...

We always said that the D&D Rules Cyclopedia is the most complete D&D book out there. That is still true, it is just a very low standard to have, because that book was only as complete as they could make it. It's open for debate if an "official" revision of what was offered back in the 90s would even be possible, so it is what it is, and it will most likely stay that way.

When I started compiling be67, the first thing I thought I would do was setting it up as a module to alter Labyrinth Lord, which is, of course, a CLONE of the Basic Expert rules and therefor in the same family of rules as the D&D RC. It didn't take long to realize that making be67 its own game was not only just a couple of steps more to take, but it might become necessary as well, because it was so very much its own thing (hence, a MUTANT rather than a CLONE).

Unconditional love? [source]

So I went for writing a complete game, which made it necessary to take a very hard look at the source material, if only to see what a "complete" version might entail. The first insight gained from that was a reminder of the damn scope of the RC. It is huge. Decades worth of playing it just once in its entirety.

The second insight was how much of a patchwork job it actually is: Weapon Mastery and Skill System are incomplete, lack proper editing and are definitely at best minimaly tested additions. It is full of little oddities that show what a hard job it must have been to compile all of that into one book. In the 90s, no less. Bits and pieces don't fit or are incomplete. Encounter matrix doesn't completely match the monster entries and while there is a lot of advice how to do a lot of what the book offers yourself, it left some huge parts unexplained (how to prepare proper dungeons, for instance).

What's more: once you take a REALLY close look, you'll find that it ALL connects just very loosely, as far as the numbers are concerned. Some of it is just copy/pasted and then expanded on without revision (or just checking if the math is right). How the original design connected is a black box, most of the time. The whole "race as class" discussion is a great indicator for that. Looking at the design it becomes obvious that there is a underlying logic to the classes offered in the book, with some of them offering some ideas where to go with that (druid and monk come to mind).

If you understand how that works, you can build every class you'd like, race is just a feature of that process. One more aspect to add. There is a chance for this to be so open, it'd allow complete customization of all aspects of the rules. It just was never done.

And fair enough, you don't have to look under the hood to play the game. But you have to when you are writing your own. Turns out, reconstructing that "black box" that is the original design will have you end up with something else entirely. And the deeper into the design the changes are, the bigger are the implications for how the game manifests on the surface. Especially if you gear it towards another setting, as be67 tries to do (Weird Sixties Grindhouse ftw, people!).

If I try to explain how monsters relate to challenge rating so a GM can potentially diy the shit out of it, I have to write that myself. If I want the GM to be able to build their own classes, I'll have to come up with something myself, because it doesn't exist in the original book. If I want to connect the numbers the game produces with how to structure adventures, or campaigns even, I have to do that from scratch, as the original book doesn't offer that ... And so on and so forth.

In that sense, the D&D RC is a very unfinished and incomplete book. Luckily so, because if they aren't able to connect all those dots, and a designer is to find their own solutions, there's no way they can claim it to be theirs, just for the tranparence of it all.

As a matter of fact, I'm not sure they are even able to entangle what has been the originl design and what has evolved because of fan or hobbyist initiative. The D&D RC, following that logic, was a very specific interpretation of one specific strain of the D&D family of games, already incorporating not original design, but concepts, insights and ideas established elsewhere (not only from the fan base, but also through many, many other successful rpgs out there).

An incomplete patch work that cannot be true to the original design due to being exposed to external and uncontrollable influences and bases its design on some unknown and obscure metric, barely makes a good argument for being protected by any means. In my opinion.

DIY, all the way ...

As things stand right now, it doesn't seem safe to associate with the D&D brand even superficially. Therefore, all publications I can manage to put out here in the next 5 months will deny all connection to the source other than it being inspiration. I'll be open about how it all connects, so it will be my very own take on some of the same principles established so many years ago. A retroclone mutant, if you will.

There is freedom in going it all the way all alone (and I might not be alone, actually). We'll see if I can claim be67 to be part of the OSR family or not. It's all still easily enough hacked and connected, but that's just something tainted now. What you guys do at your table is yours to decide, naturally, I just can't believe that it'll be open discourse from now on. At least it's not safe to assume so right now.

We'll see.

Right now, WotC tries to play it for time while funneling critique into non-existance, but the damage is done and gears started moving all over the place. Interesting times.

In closing I want to share a double page from be67 that took me a long time to complete, for the reasons I stated above. It might need more context, but I think the basic premise is easily enough grasped: it is a dynamic random encounter table that should help propelling the narrative in a way forward that supports the Grindhouse Feature the GM has prepared. Here we go:

Isn't she a beauty? Anyway. What I'm trying to say and show here is that be67 will not only be its own thing, it'll also be "complete" in a sense that there'll be no part of the rules that's not so throroughly and openly connected, that you'd have to guess why it is the way it is in its context. The above in part of a little machine that'll allow a GM to always keep the game within the parameters it establishes. with very little bookkeeping, I might add.

And that's that. If you've published something that may be construed to be close to what the Wizards do at that Coast, my advice would be to revise the hell out of it and build as much distance to those greedy fuckers as possible. I'll definitely do that.

And if you are in it for what I'm trying to do here, I hope you'll enjoy be67 as its own thing, just as much as you'd have while I could have associated it with the origins of the hobby. The hint needs to be enough.

Take care, friends and neighbors. Thanks for reading!

Lots of Ducks, no Row (and a Gallery of Dreams) ... not a rant

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 18:15:00 +0000

Third Take: It'll be all right. The Wizards will get a bloody nose, hopefully painful enough that they see a need to get rid of some of their upper management ... That said, fuck them. Seems like it'll be a chance to free the core of our hobby a bit more and people actually seemed to come together, which is great. It'll also open the eyes of some new to the hobby, and they will look for alternatives. All the better. Feels like a net positive, so far. I'll leave the original second take up, altering it at places a bit. The short of it is, we here at Disoriented Ranger Publishing will get at least three brand new rpgs out there in the next couple of months. We'll be trucking on.

[Source]

Second Take: Happy New Year, friends and neighbors! Imagine the vilest rant written on the current "OGL" kerfuffle. All snappy and on point, making no prisoners, cutting prose ... all of that, cursing those damn wizards for generations. A rant so harsh, google crawlers would stop for a Milli-second to consider if corporate greed has finally gone too far. Imagine all that, imagine me scratching it now, sucking it all up with all its weapon-grade toxicity and spitting it out again to ... write this instead.

What a start, right?

So Hasbro tried to change the OGL to a shakedown scheme on a Friday the 13th ... The nerve on those fuckers is unbelievable. Gotta say, I was riled up for a second there. Then again, by now it is pretty clear that Big Corp likes to act all sociopath, the clear distinction to psychopath being that Big Corporations are a clear product of society. We let it happen. We created those monsters. Now we have to fight them. Same old ...

Look, if you know the blog, you know my stance on this. Original D&D is as close to being "cultural heritage" as we can get in western civilization, considering its societal impact. It was never a good match to corporate greed. They can just fuck off. And they will, eventually, when they fucked what is now a "brand" instead of a "common good" into the form they envision: a theme park with a money printing subscription scheme where you own nothing of the content or the rules and be happy about it.

Sounds familiar? It should. It's what they ALL try to make happen, for years now. Microsoft is doing it, Adobe is doing it, Big Pharma is doing it, Disney is doing it ... all the same, all over the place. Stream your movies, you don't have to own them. Read e-books, who needs physical copies?! And your games are digital already, you don't even need to install them anymore ...

It just costs you all the time. And they want to know EXACTLY what you are consuming. Because you could be a bad [consuming entity] and CHEAT those good hearted corporations of their money! So, no privacy. For sure. You have nothing to hide, right? So what's the problem?

[Source]

You know what? They also want to tell you what's best. They've done the work, for sure, so there's no reason for you to think on your own ... And on, and on, as if no one had ever thought about this in the last couple of decades. As if all those problems are new. They aren't, and the answers to what overreach and exploitation mean and where the limits SHOULD BE have been clear for some time now.

That said, Big Money does as Big Money does, people do as people do. Now we'll have a little drama, it'll happen something akin to a compromise and the next push is around the next corner. People don't learn, or they have learned already.

But where does it put you and me?

So many ducks ...

I have, over the years, written and published some things here and there. A great deal of all of that unpublished stuff is done to one degree or another. So instead of lamenting corporate greed, I should tell you a bit about what I've been working on. Maybe you see something you like or didn't know about (or maybe feel inclined now to check out?).

All of you should be aware of Monkey Business, the Labyrinth Lord adventure module I published years ago ... Overall positive reviews, lots of material to look at and use. No OGL, but agrees to the Labyrinth Lord license, which is connected. So I might have to put it down if I'm told to when I'm told to. Needs a rework anyways ... Until then, for sure a pdf worth purchasing!

The Pitch: The heroes in this huge procedural sandbox are confronted with sentient apes selling a powerful drug in the jungle. Five factions, random ruins and treasure and cannibals. Includes a beautifully hand-drawn dungeon map and enough material to run a massive and weird jungle campaign!

You all should have heard about ORWELL by now (a dystopian rpg with a satirical bend that tackles EXACTLY the contemporary bullshit we are getting the Hasbro treatment of right now ... just saying). I'm mighty proud of that game. You should buy it, play it, and tell your friends. Be the first to do so! Because so far, very few cared :)

The Pitch: The year is 2081, the United States of Europe (USE, for short) are ruled by one, corporate owned party called The Family. The Family measures of control include industrially produced children (already indoctrinated), declaring puberty as illegal and drone supported mind-reading cyborgs called "Bias Judges". It's basically "CyberPunk goes Peter Pan" with an anime twist or two ... Reads like a dystopian nightmare, plays like a grown up version of Paranoia, with just as much laughs.

I furthermore started publishing a collection of my favorite posts here, slightly edited, sorted by topics and with a nice layout. Third part has just hit digital shelves at drivethrurpg.

The Pitch: It is a small wonder that blogger still exists as an option. It is weakened and watered down, but still around. That those things can change within weeks is what the whole OGL affair proves easily right now. Hence the pdfs, hopefully with a PoD version soon, too. So this saves and conserves my efforts in the last 10 years.

three more to go in this regard, and good one, too!

I aim to publish at least 3 more games this year. One of them, be67, was written with OSR retroclone compatibility in mind. As a matter of fact, it was thought as a gimmick to be able to decosntruct the whole game towards BX. Can't do that anymore, so it will be rewritten and it'll be its own thing. Sucks, but can't be helped. in the end, however, I will have my own little OSR Mutant, with lots of possibilities to build on. For instance, Monkey Business 2.0 would be entirely be67, then!

The Pitch: be67 is a rpg set in the Weird Sixties and plays like a grindhouse feature. It's gonzo, it's brutal, it's funny ... and it features seven fine classes for the genre that all can go up to level 30, all with providing the tools for epic campaign arcs and fantastic adventures! All my future adventures will be based on this system.

The next one I'm working on is the editing and publishing the first DRP game that's not written by me, but by my good friend Mark van Vlack! The name is AMAZING ADVENTURES / INCREDULOUS EXPLOITS and it was conceived as result of the fun challenge (Mark put on himself) to write a fantasy rpg where EVERYTHING is random. Characters, Adventures, Monsters ... all of it, all analogue. And it worked like a charm. A couple of year later he made an updated version of the rules for games IN SPACE and just last year he finished drafting an omnibus of all of it: the RANDOMNOMICON. I love all of it, and asked him, if we could join forces and publish it via DRP. He agreed, I'm right now in the process of collecting artwork and editing that 500 pages beast and I promised him that he'll have something to show for Christmas 2023!

The Pitch: Fantastic for one shots, extremely flexible with its settings (Fantasy, SF, Science Fantasy ... all in between), with a huge array of tools to create everything from monsters to dungeons, villages and space ports (among other things ... this game is HUGE with tables of all kind). Rules for magic, for psychic abilities, for mutations, anything you could imagine, really. Literally decades worth of gaming material and highly customizable.

That third game I was hinting on will be a rules lite attempt. Something with fast rules and some odd design angles I'm exploring right now. I've talked about it before over the years, and the FINAL name of this project will be BRAWLERS. Dark fantasy with a steampunk twist (I call it DungeonPunk) in which a group of dubious characters go on heists for Petty Godlings. Robbing monsters for fun and profit. The game will use dice and cards, missions will be generated procedurally ...

The Pitch: Live is cheap in the Victorian world of DungeonPunk. Corrupting humanity was easy enough, now the Monsters are in charge. Not that they changed that much, but they take what they want. And so should you, punk. The world lies in ruins and is yours to take. A club is cheap enough, take one and go for the dungeons. Killing is easy enough, you see that every day on the streets of the slums you call your home. Take your friends. Who else is going to cover your back? If the authorities are coming for you, let them feel your anger. If you're lucky, they'll fear you someday in the future. If you live that long. Now go and loot. Gold can buy you a new arm, a magical sword even or a shiny new armor, but eventually it will buy you freedom. And always remember: a Crowscare will stitch you together every time, but a Whisperer will make you better.

For the rest, I'll just let pictures talk ...

A SF variant of Brawlers!

Long overdue ...

Maybe those compatibility claims end up changing ...

Let's leave it at that? There's still lots of work to do, and some things had to be put on hold (Robo-Hitler, for instance, has ways to go in areas out of my control). I'll work it all over the coming months and we will see what happens.

We are going to be all right ...

I am a small light in that circus. No reach or influence at all. Those Wizards won't bother, I'm sure. However, I depend, to a degree, on a somewhat functioning market around me so that I can at least present my wares to some potential customers. We saw that threatened in the last couple of days. Again, and this time with more gusto than usual. I will not forget this and it must have consequences.

Anyway, I hope you guys will check out some of my entries and have fun doing so. There is more to come! Turns out, I take 3 to 5 years to finish a game. No scene seems to be that stable. All the time I take to establish myself in one takes away from what I should do, which is writing. So I won't bother taht much anymore. I will keep blogging, but I might have to find ways to monetize all of it (the blog will remain free, but it might get an option to give me some moneyz).

As I said, it'll be all right. The scene is already adjusting, and Hasbro likes money more than they do their politics. They will have to compromise, people will adapt and prepare, and some day, maybe, D&D will be free. I hope to live to see it.

And a final word about that game it is all done for: LOST SONGS OF THE NIBELUNGS ... It WILL happen, as soon as I have managed to take all the obstacles I think I need to take to make this the book I want it to be. I'll take that time.

That's it. That's my piece. Took me long enough. this year might see some more surprises here on the blog. Things are moving in the background :D Stay tuned, stay happy, stay healthy.

Love

Don't ask me ...

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 15:08:00 +0000

I know. I haven't blogged in a while. It's been difficult. Among all things, I think I have said all I can say about the game without repeating myself a lot or stretching it. At least in this here medium. What's next is a number of publications where I get to explore all of this in depth and beyond. It's been long due, and it will happen eventually (I'll have some teasers at the end for those interested ...). Doing this for the time I'm doing this, I get asked shockingly often how to approach this hobby of ours. What's good, what's popping, where to start ... I always have a hard time answering this, so here's a post (yay!?).

To be honest, I am truly lost

I make a habit of visiting shops selling role-playing games and paraphernalia when I'm in a city big enough to actually accomodate something like that. Here in Germany it is a bit different than in the US as no one seems to bother and my impression is, those shops are disappearing more and more here.

A couple of years ago I started to get a strange feeling when I found one of those shops and looked for books to buy: nothing appealed to me at all. Same old, same old, all colorful, all with lots and lots of supplements ... all very much uninspired. The market is stretched so thin that only the blandest of corporate word sauce makes it into the shelves. No exotic little independant games, no old games, no character in the selection, for lack of a better word.

Nothing is new anymore ... [Source]

It is all so bland, most of the time I have to go and spend my money elsewhere (usually I end up buying a d20 or something like that).

To the point: there was nothing to explore, nothing to discover. I had the direct contrast of this when visiting one of those shops in Hamburg. I had had high hopes there. Big shop in a big city ... and it left me underwhelmed. The staff was uninterested close to hostile and while it had lots of stuff to sell, it all was just kind of there. I bought a deck of playing cards I liked and left dissapointed.

However, just down the road it had a little comic shop, and I thought, while I'm already there, I could take a look. Smaller shop, so full of comics it left no room for natural light to come in. Good selection, too, as far as first impressions go. But what really really got me stoked was two very prominent and STACKED bins full of recommendations collected by the staff there.

Fringe shit throughout, stuff I've never seen or heard about, as well as some popular favorites. Sometimes with a couple of words why it's good, all of them good ways to engage with the clerk behind the counter and geek out. I left money in that shop. Too much, according to my wife, but it felt justified.

Very weird, very funny ... [Source]

Made me think, too.

It is not even that the comics themselves had been the best thing ever (although I did have fun with the lot of them), but among all the things sold in that shop, they'd been enthusiastic enough to share what they liked. I always thought it worthwhile asking the people knee deep in a topic what their preferences are. It's always interesting, if nothing else.

So you might think: but good Sir, isn't it just common sense to go and ask the people working in those places what's good and interesting? To which I'll say that I'm not only a somewhat peculiar person in those regards (as in: shy), I also know too much on the rpg topic already, so chances are that I will encounter opinions I will feel the urge to challenge (if you've read anything here, you know what I talk about). I am opinionated like that, so I don't engage easily.

My point is, however, the shop itself should offer a path of sorts, a map, if you will, for the interested customer to find and follow up on. It's what we book sellers in Germany call the "wallpaper": the books you put on display, being your preference, help a customer understanding you, which, in turn, offers opportunities for conversation. They show their hand so you can come and play. It helps getting over the insecurities, over that threshold of the unknown other.

In too deep

While it sucks to go into a shop knowing too much, it sure as hell gets really ugly when someone interested in the hobby asks you for advice (I know, it stands in direct contradiction to the above, but I already told you I'm peculiar ...). I could talk about the finer points of game design all day (and have put it to the test when talking to like minded people), but when confronted with an enthusiastic lack of knowledge, I'm at a loss fast. Again.

One could say that I'm so deep in that I don't see the forest because of all the trees, but that's not entirely true (although part of it). What's more problematic, however, is that our hobby relies too heavily on recruiting through self-professed gamemasters without offering the tools for it as well. And without the tools it needs, you'll more often than not end up with a personality cult of sorts.

Actually, "they" (big corp, naturally) fuel that idea of cult-like, personality driven recruitment through their media representations of the hobby, which are always never accurate, imo. And by design, too. Think about it: their policy is customer driven, they want to sell shit, so they can't tell customers that it needs a certain set of skills to do Gamemastering properly. Everyone needs to buy, so everyone needs to be welcome.

Which ironically leads to the impression that the circus clown bullshit that goes for role-playing in popular youtube shows is what the game is about. All need to be flamboyant improv actors in fancy costumes, everything needs to be snappy and immediate. Storytelling, yes, but you won't see Critical Role (or whatever) crunch and grind some high level AD&D combat over a couple of sessions ...

Anyway, I digress. I have made that point elsewhere somewhere already: the popular kids have discovered D&D now, so it's all about showing off and hierarchy and superficial (virtue) signalling. That's not me. As a matter of fact, I really don't care for that aspect of the hobby at all and there is a lingering fear that someone new to the hobby asking me about it just wants a road map to the circus. Because I'm one of those clowns. Right?

Then again, I do love the hobby and I do have opinions, so it might be ill advised to overcompensate and go all Joseph Campbell and game design approaches and history of the hobby or, in other words, avoid the all-out nerd-speak to proof the stereotype by being it. Ease them into it, then go full nerd.

[Source]

But how?

Again, I'm conflicted there, but usually I have to claim authority by telling what I've done so far in the hobby (the little I did is more than most did, relatively speaking) and somewhat where I stand. Or rather, what I think the hobby is about and what it takes. As described above, I'll show my hand. Usually people will realize then, sooner or later, if that means something to them or not. If it's interesting and something to explore further, or not at all what they wanted or expected.

So, at best those people get an individual take with a lecture and reading recommendations. Not very shiny at all, and most defintiely not the kind of glitter some people like to engage in, but honest to the point where someone REALLY interested might as well end up playing at my table, and with the proper attitude too. If it is that kind of contact, that is. If it's a "friend of a friend" asking, it gets difficult again.

How to approach our hobby (meaningfully)

Here's the original inspiration for this post. A colleague of my wife asked what she could give her boyfriend as a present that could be considered a nice entry into the hobby, because he has shown interest to get something started. The question was forwarded to me, and here we are.

The first problem is, I don't know the person and I won't get a read on him as well, so this is totally into the blue. The second problem is, there is no solid recommendation for a role-playing book that checks all the boxes so well that it could be a cold, all-purpose sell for everyone.

Most indie publishers don't have the funds for proper artwork or any means to have a proper layout, so there will be no appeal as a present, regardless of the quality of the content. Or they are great coffee table fodder, but so fringe that they still won't work as a general entry to the hobby.

What's more, there are so many serviceable (as in: will get you gaming with friends) role-playing games out there that are free in their digital version that it'd make no sense at all to actually buy one as a present unless it really checks all the boxes (which, again, to my knowledge doesn't exist).

The popular brands are out as well, since I don't subscribe to their business models and their approaches to game design in general. They might be shiny, but they are the poison apple.

[Source]

What's left? My answer was to have him learn about the origins of the hobby and make up his own opinion. The scholary approach, if you will. So I offered she should gift him either Empire of Imagination or Rise of the Dungeon Master, both readily available in Germany and with decent enough takes on how the hobby started (as an entry, of course). Names and dates and stories. With this, or so my thinking, someone really interested would have all they need to decide how to tackle this hobby.

Another recommendation was trying their hand at one of the numerous rpg-board game hybrids out there, since they capture the essence of "classic" play well enough without needing the commitment it takes to start and maintain a campaign (Legends of Andor and Mage Knight made the list there). You'll learn the tropes and it makes for a great big box under the tree.

A third option would be to make something like a Player Starter Kit with some nice dice, maybe a solid folder for character sheets (something made out of wood with a nice dragon up front, maybe?), a personalized leather bag to carry the dice ... stuff like that, stuff that'd be useful in every game.

All in all it's not a lot to go with, and only relates to playing role-playing games in the narrowest of senses. It doesn't help in establishing what one might like (or even just to get a sense of what it would actually be like to play), but it could help mapping the territory.

And that's that. While I'm at least somewhat relieved that something came to mind, it really helped more illustrating the shortcomings of getting people interested in this little hobby of ours beyond the original impulse. One could do worse than reading a reasonably well researched biography of Gary Gygax to get an idea what made that early D&D such a success, but it's still a bit of a stretch.

It's also all so fractured

There's another thing making it difficult to offer guidance for our hobby: by now it all seems to break down into smaller and smaller tribes all over the place. And the loudest ones aren't really good representatives of the hobby in general. The OSR? Done for. Or it's something else now that milks it for what it's worth. The "artpunk" discussion? Blech. Those trying too hard to be the opposite? Yawn. Official D&D? Excludingly diverse, all posture no substance. The next edge lord driving nother pig through the digital village? Pestiferous, at best.

Just the other day I saw a new book by Lamentations of the Flame Princess out in the wild. Hadn't heard a word about it. As always with LotFP, it was a solid presentation. A good looking book. And yet, I did not care to even just look inside. There is SO MUCH scorched earth and bad policy associated with the brand that I won't bother anymore.

There was a time when I'd recommend those books for all they did well when they did it. Today I'd hope people new to the hobby don't stumble across all the bullshit in that corner of the internet before seeing the more positive sides of the hobby first.

Add to that even more social media controversies and flame wars and scandals and cancellations all over the place, and what are you left with? A couple of quiet and well hidden forums trucking on (Basic Fantasy comes to mind, as do the guys that publish the Threshold zine). The rest, generally speaking, seems to be a very loud and toxic environment not worth pointing towards.

[Source]

So, don't ask me?

Maybe. It's that "get off of my lawn" kind of thinking that just comes from not having many options to begin with. It's also mixed with the feeling that my way of playing is already fringe in the greater hobby, so people might not find what they are looking for if their inspiration to look is derived from aspects of the hobby that follow very different rules and ideas. Doesn't mean I'm not willing. Doesn't mean those worlds don't intersect. But it makes it difficult to be an "embassador" of sorts for the hobby.

So I hope my recommendations fall on fertile ground and some people have some great gaming ahead. That'd be nice.

And to close on a more positive note: there is an "old school" shop of sorts in Ulm that I visit whenever I can. Lots and lots of fringe games and old games mixed in with board and card games and books and all kinds of fun stuff. It is all over the place, but in a good way. If you get lost in there, you will find treasures to bring home. At least I do everytime I get to spend some time in there.

You know, I do get to spend money for gaming material. I still collect, my taste in those things is just very, very fringe nowadays. Maybe I'll share my purchases this year in another post. I feel like giving the blog some more love the next couple of weeks.

Either way, thank you for reading! How would you guys handle something like this? What would you consider a good rpg book for someone who never had any other exposure to the hobby? Is there such a thing? Should it exist?

[Source]

-------------

Some teaser art for my upcoming BX retroclone mutant be67. It plays in the weird Sixties. We have a layout and the artwork is coming together as well (copyright is all mine):

Another project I'm working on for 2023:

There's more, but that's enough for today, I'd say :)

Tell them to show and not tell ... (a look inside the be67 GM chapter)

noreply@blogger.com (Jens D.) — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 08:57:00 +0000

One of the most difficults tasks when writing a set of rules is to not necessarily to make those rules understood but more so to write the book in a way that allows the reader to produce as close as possible to the same experience as you make happen when you play the game you are writing. You need to get them into the same headspace, if you will, to share the same vision you have. One of the first rules in that regard (I think for writing in general, actually) is to assume they know nothing you know.

We need to be told that we should show and not tell ...

Readers might even know more or just "differently", but if they don't go along with what you are proposing (for whatever reason), they won't get it. And the worst case scenario for that would be that they'll have a bad experience when playing your game. So I'm extra meticulous about making myself as clear as possible.

Part of that exercise is to put the reader in a position to compare their own frame of reference to mine and find the overlap. To be totally fair, the ideal mix for a text like this is in huge part "telling" and in some parts "showing" (examples and all that), but to some degree it needs to be an exchange of references in order to build common ground.

Therefore, today I'll show you how I tell them what can be seen as inspiration to show the players the Weird Sixties instead of telling them ... This is part of the beginning of the Chapter about GMing be67:

SOURCES & INSPIRATIONS

The first part of this chapter seems a bit excessive at first glance, but we strongly believe that (1) many of the inspirations collected here are already known but so popular that it’s easy to lose out of sight how deeply rooted they are in the Sixties, that (2) it needs at least all of that to show how versatile popular culture had been almost 60 years ago and (3) that it is necessary to visualize that psychosphere where grindhouse publications would borrow their ideas from.

There’s furthermore a long upheld tradition in role-playing games to have something akin to what was called “Appendix: N” in AD&D 1e. It’s not as much “required reading” as it is a guide towards what informed the designers to do what they did. Some of the same is true here, of course, so the following is neither complete nor canon, but recommendations what could give a Gamemaster in be67 an edge or two.

What’s more, many of the titles collected below would find sequels and reboots and additions for decades to come, some inspired or initiated whole new genres or cultural shifts. What happened in the Sixties build the foundations for the main cultural identity of the 20^th and early 21^st centuries. That’s a lot.

What are the Sixties?

What follows is a somewhat romanticized and decidedly US-centric description of the Sixties. Other cultures definitely contributed to our idea of the Sixties in this context (Japan and the UK, mainly), and we will give some examples of that, but for length alone we have to cut corners here and give some pointers instead.

In short, the Sixties could be characterized (for the purpose of this game) as “psychedelic optimism”. It was happy and colorful and feminine, with a good dose of “weird” intruding popular culture in form of the freedom movement and some strong and distinct subcultures all across cultural niches in the US to boot. There was movement and palpable friction between poor and wealthy as well as traditional and more non-conventional values.

There also was Vietnam, but it wasn’t (yet) the war that would traumatize the US for decades to come. Careful observers would see first signs of that early on and the soldiers that came back had went through hell, obviously, but without an audience. And yes, people demonstrated against the war, but it was an ongoing process with the hallmarks of disaster only.

A huge part of the positive spin (or feel) the Sixties had was due to the introduction of several psychoactive drugs to the populace. The first drugs that come to mind in that regard are, of course, marijuana and LSD (or Acid) popular with artists and the counterculture (as well as some scientists). However, an impact just as big had the invention of Valium and derivatives in 1963. Popular- and counterculture had all been on very mellow drugs, and that, arguably, took the edge of the Sixties while making them more fun all around (again, for the purpose of this book … things, naturally, had been a little bit more complex than that).

There was some technological optimism as well, with lots of innovation and people with enough money to buy it. The Sixties saw an economic surge in the US, mostly due to government finishing what Kennedy had started. And while that would fall flat in the 70s, it certainly helped spending in the Sixties. In general we can assume that the average citizen in the 1960s had access to most of the accommodations we have today, minus computers and cell phones. Things like ATMs or hand-held calculators had been invented, but weren’t in heavy circulation at 1967. Maybe something you’d see an article in the newspapers about. Computers did exist, but only to the degree that people in general had been aware of them and it gave authors some strange ideas about the future. When in doubt, accept that a more “primitive” version of the tool in question might have been available.

Those are the basic tones of the game.

But what did that look like?

TV in the Sixties definitely had some highly recognizable staples. Here’s a great sample how weird it could actually get in mainstream TV:

The Addams Family
The Avengers
Batman
The Beverly Hillbillies
Bewitched
Get Smart
Gilligan’s Island
Hogan’s Heroes
I Dream Of Jeannie
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
The Munsters
My Favorite Martian
Rawhide
Star Trek
The Twilight Zone

Before we go into the grindhouse experience, we also should take a look into mainstream cinema. It featured some genuine classics. Let’s see what had hit cinemas that decade until 1967 alone:

A Fistful of Dollars
A Shot in the Dark
The Birds
Blow-Up
Bonnie and Clyde
Carnival of Souls
Cool Hand Luke
Dr. Strangelove
For A Few Dollars More
The Godson
The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
The Great Escape
House of Usher
The Innocents
James Bond (Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice & Casino Royale)
Lawrence of Arabia
Lolita
Mary Poppins
The Pink Panther
Planet of the Apes
Psycho
The Time Machine
The Wild Bunch

That’s only a small selection of popular movies with comedic, violent, horror or surreal elements and only in the first seven years of the Sixties (and mostly US). Great movies have been done before and after that and all over the world. For instance, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Night of the Living Dead and Easy Rider didn’t make the list because they had been released in 1968 and 1969 (but had been in production in 1967).

Movies, documentaries and TV shows from later decades but playing in the Sixties also offer great sources of inspiration. Here are some definite highlights (as far as the game is concerned):

American Graffiti (1973)
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
Catch Me If You Can (2002)
The Doors (1991)
Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)
Green Book (2018)
Inherent Vice (2014 for the movie, the book was 2009)
JFK (1991)
Mad Men (series, 2007-2015)
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
Perfect World (1993)
The Rum Diary (2011)
Taking Woodstock (2009)
When You’re Strange (documentary, 2009)
Woodstock (documentary, 1970)

This is, again, just the tip of the iceberg and very mainstream, but for that reason easily accessible just the same.

The seedy underbelly of 60s cinema?

The one thing lacking in the Sixties was proper special effects. They did good with what they had. In some cases, anyway. But most of the time the results will fall under “acquired taste” today. Every one of the Science Fiction and Horror movies of the Sixties will make fantastic pitches for be67 adventures, however, so we encourage looking all of them up for inspiration (or even viewing, for that matter). That said, we will name a couple of favorites just to show a glimpse what’s there to discover and explore:

Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy
Billie the Kid v. Dracula
Black Sabbath
Blood Feast
Brides of Dracula
Dr. Who & the Daleks
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
The Gorgon
Hillbillies in a Haunted House
Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
Matango (a.k.a. Attack of the Mushroom People)
Mothra vs. Godzilla
Onibaba

That’s just a small selection, already bordering hard into grindhouse-territory,

Also authors and books and music, oh my!

Many, many authors of weird tales still highly popular today had already successfully published books in the 1960s. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, for instance, got published as a paperback only early in the Sixties and then became hugely popular in colleges (the famous “Gandalf for President” pins started then and there). It resonated very well with the Zeitgeist of the 60s. And of course the old and fantastic classics had also been around back then: H. G. Wells, H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, Bram Stoker …

Mix in Eastern influences feeding new impulses into the Western collective unconscious and some drugs and you end up with the Beatnik movement and all the blues and rock and folk music opening up to new psychedelic realms, all of that eventually amalgamating into the Summer of Love in 1967 and Woodstock 1969.

We can’t possibly map all of this here, but we will name a couple of our personal favorites to give an impression what we might refer to when GMing be67 (in the tradition of the famous Appendix N):

Isaac Asimov
Peter S. Beagle
William S. Borroughs
Charles Bukowski
Anthony Burgess
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Philip K. Dick
E. R. Eddison
Philip José Farmer
Dashiell Hammett
Robert A. Heinlein
Frank Herbert
Ursula K. LeGuin
Mervyn Peake
Thomas Pynchon
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Roger Zelazny

All of the above contributed a lot to what was imaginable back then, which naturally also ended up one way or another on grindhouse movie theater screens (while being watered down immensely and somewhat more sleazy) .

As for music: using the soundtracks of all the collected entertainment above should give a GM more than enough material about what the Sixties sounded like. All the bands and artists performing at Woodstock are a good start, the Beatles should be in that mix, some country, some folk, but also classic music like Mozart or Bach and the like (see Apocalypse Now, 2001 or Clockwork Orange for ideas).

That said, even contemporary music can help a Gamemaster getting some inspiration … More on that in the next part.

Summoning the Weird Sixties!

We have used throughout this book quotes from movies that wouldn’t be considered original grindhouse features by any sane movie aficionado. Mostly, anyways. The material we quoted for inspiration is also pretty much mainstream popular throughout, although many of them wouldn’t exist without exploitation cinema. Why is that? The idea behind this was to give some pointers where one actually would find inspiration for grindhouse features and how common those tropes are now because of it. This is how it works:

Exploitation movies take what is popular and use it shamelessly, often towards the sensational and uncouth. It’s where the name came from, as a matter of fact. Aspiring GM of be67 should take this to heart and have some fun with doing the same.

Basically, every popular story idea, doesn’t matter what medium, can be made into a grindhouse feature just by mixing it relentlessly with other ideas and making it somewhat less reputable in the process but glorious because of it.

The gold standard that produces would nowadays be something akin to a Tarantino movie. A daunting proposition, one might say. As would be to assume that all D&D games are on par with Tolkien’s work. In both cases, however, players can have just as much fun as they’d have watching a Tarantino movie or reading Tolkien. The reason for this is that the rules will already get you half way there! So far we have provided:

Characters you would find in those movies,
with backstories that already sound like bad movie plots, and
an award system that motivates players to go all-in on the premises of their Characters (if they like xp), but furthermore
with a combat system as gory as it gets and
lots of other rules like Funk Rerolls and the Bubblegum Barometer to give the game that specific feel!

This chapter will add some more tools and insights to help Gamemasters of be67 with their games with The Rule of Cool, some basic structuring for adventures, what High Level Play will look like, how to work Skills as a GM, Environmental Effects, how to keep players happy with Special Loot, how to convert other gaming material, how to make Character Classes from scratch and how to handle Monsters. All of that and some more general advice should offer a Gamemaster more than enough material to prepare and run games set in the Weird Sixties for years. Future publications will add Adventure Modules, new Classes, different Settings and even more Tools to that.

-----------------------------------

And that's the introduction for gamemasters to the game, giving you an impression what this book will read like and what scope it'll offer on it's, roughly, 140 pages A5. We here at Disoriented Ranger Publishing take our funny games serious like that ...

I'd be happy to hear thoughts on the above, of course. What baffled me most when I researched this was how much of the Sixties is still mulled over to this day, one way or another. So, was this helpful at all? Did it convey a frame to work with?

Anyway, back to work. I still have high hopes that be67 will see the light of day this year, at least in pdf form. There's other things in the works, and I'm currently a bit scattered. But it'll sort itself out, I'm sure of it. Until then, have some artwork for the book (still in the process of collecting those and experimenting with this on Midjourney ...):

Funky Vampire Queen?

Ghosttrain, New York, 1967 ...

Summer of Love ... but it's Zombies!

Still undecided about those colors ...