Personal – Slice of Beef

Game Design is Just Problem-Solving

Or can be – anyway. This is probably very obvious, but it didn’t click with me until yesterday.

I actually didn’t plan on writing adventures or designing games. I think there’s a quote on a game Discord somewhere from last year that says I didn’t want to ever try. I never actually thought I was capable of (good) game design – mostly because I’m not very “tactically”-oriented. I never know how to figure out synergy during character generation or “min-maxing” as they say when doing character “builds”. I just pick stuff that looks cool or fun or thematic and run with it. I never paid attention to how things worked, per se, or thought about why something was fun (though I do that often, now). I didn’t think I had the brain for game design – I didn’t have experience analysing games like that.

But now that I’m actually making things (I have launched a whole-ass studio), I realise that you’re just answering questions, or making mechanics that back up whatever “thesis” statement you’re trying to argue for. The problem isn’t “how do I design death mechanics?” or “what existing method should I choose?” but “how can I make death impactful?” or “how could I solve the problem of wanting characters to avoid death but still have it on the table as a possibility?”. I might not be making clear what distinction there is exactly between those things, but finding out that there is a distinction is what changed things for me. Game design is just solving a puzzle – and I like puzzles.

See, I solve puzzles all the time. I look at goals – what I want to achieve, and build backward; not only when I’m running games or writing scenario hooks, but in my job, when making art, or when I’m fixing my computer! That’s game design, too! There are some problems that benefit from an extra set of eyes, or looking at existing solutions and building off of them, but that’s still just methods of problem-solving! It’s not that you’re designing things, you’re answering questions (and asking them), and solving the overarching problem of “how do I do this and still make this fun”?

Anyway, just a short thought for now. Focusing my creative energies on other writing projects…

On Improving Game Mastery

“IS WHAT I’M MAKING EVEN GOOD?” I ask myself,

“WHERE CAN I GET UNBIASED FEEDBACK?” I continue,

“HOW DO I GET BETTER?” I finish.

Dungeons. Dungeons, dungeons, dungeons. I can read dozens of articles on dungeon design. I can take courses, and watch videos. I can look at what I think are good dungeons, and I can tell when something is a bad dungeon… but how do I know if my work, my dungeons, are actually. getting better? Why even make dungeons at all? Why dungeons?

The first part of the answer is “make more dungeons” (and compare the old ones to the new ones), but I only manage to make a couple per year, and they’re not always that thoughtful. I barely even have experience being inside dungeons as a player! I’m a baby! I’ve only played TTRPGs since late 2017, and I’ve only been running them for the last two years… I feel like I’m in a metaphysical crisis, a philosophical despair about the dungeon here.

But dungeons are just an example vehicle for general discussion here – all this is a result of my trying to put one together over the last week. The real point is, I feel like I’m spinning my wheels about game mastery and game design these days. I could run sessions 5 times a week, or write up a dozen scenario hooks, and it would probably lead to some improvement, but it’s not directed practice – my energy isn’t primarily being spent on being a better game master. Rather, I’m just going through the motions. Instead of practicing the metaphorical guitar, I’m just strumming the strings for twenty minutes – it all feels so aimless. What do I need to do, how do I focus on something specific to improve upon? How can I best bridge that gap between theory and praxis?

Even theory is tough – I used to feel quite smart during my university days. I was truly picking up knowledge and figuring out how to apply it… but lately, I can read through game design books and it’s like “what am I even picking up, here?” or “how do I actually study this?”! I’ve nearly forgotten decades of school and how to learn things! Applying it is worse – how do I know when I’ve succeeded? “Your players had fun” is an extremely low bar for me (a good one to strive for with the casual games master, but not really what I’m talking about here). I’m aiming for the intentional application of good gaming. Some sessions will just not work out – they won’t be fun. But that’s never necessarily the game master’s fault alone – it’s a myriad of factors. What I want is to figure out how to parse out those factors – and know that even if things weren’t fun, what did I do right anyway?

It isn’t exactly a self-confidence thing – I think my Cult in the Empire of Decadence was a good module. I even think the Fools’ Day dungeon I’m working on is going to be up to a decent standard. I’m still happy to run things and post my work online (when I manage the time to do the work anyway). But as a “professional” game designer (one that’s making a profit) I don’t want to put out work that’s not worth the price. I probably spent a few hundred dollars on making Cult and maybe 60-80 hours of work on it – how much is my time worth? A lot! I need to pay myself a living wage, after all. It’s not fair to pay myself less. But also – how can you expect consumers to buy something awful? I tried to price Cult fairly – it’s a good piece of work, and I’m proud of it. But I don’t want to be Wizards of the Coast charging $80 for a slim hot mess of a module that needs major re-working, that you then have to pay another $40 extra to get the digital edition of. There are fair wages, and then there’s… that.

That said, maybe the bar for good design is lower than I think it is…

“Write What You Know”

I’m sure you’ve heard it before – in the context of writer’s block and not knowing what to do, the advice often given on writer’s blogs and somesuch is to “write what you know”; this idea that you should take things you’ve experienced and put them into your work and that makes the creative process easy… This also applies to tabletop roleplaying games! And no – not just writing modules (though I’ll get to that).

Last year, I ran a campaign in Stars Without Number, a sci-fi Old-School Rennaissance system by Kevin Crawford. I wrote a bit about it, I think – it’s a great system, and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in sci-fi (and OSR) to check it out.

But it wasn’t for me. And it’s not because I didn’t like it – I loved it. Kevin Crawford writes good stuff. Go buy the fancy deluxe version right now. The problem was that I don’t actually know shit about sci-fi or even fantasy-based space operas, as it turns out. Running a campaign in a theme I knew very little about (comparatively) was incredibly difficult. I don’t know the tropes (let alone how to possibly subvert them), and I basically just ended up having to peer into the depths of my fantasy knowledge to pull out a generic quest and strap LED lights and chrome on top. Which… kind of is what a space opera is, right? Either way, it was a pain in the ass to prep for, as a lot of my stuff is improvised at the table, and in between sessions I just had to read short sci-fi stories to steal ideas from and it felt like a lot of unnecessary work. I wasn’t a bad game master by any means, but it felt weak.

Fantasy is much easier – I read hundreds of fantasy novels when I was a kid, and even though I do not feel like I know the genre, it’s amazing the amount of stuff and tropes I can pull when creating adventure hooks and ideas for games – just because of what I’ve been exposed to and what I know. I personally probably won’t ever run sci-fi again unless it’s a premade module. I learned my lesson from that. As for writing…

…I did try and write a serious module. I posted about it last month – published under my company, Bovidae Studios. And it was a great project – I’m really pleased with how it came out! Yet, it was still a lot of work when I had to do the serious bits. I took a lot of jokes out of it in one of the final revisions, if you can believe that. I just struggle with writing truly serious content! So I’m taking a bit of a break from my second serious OSE module and writing a comedy one-shot, for April Fools’ day, which also happens to be my birthday (my whole life was a joke, really). It will be PWYW this time (consider it a birthday gift from me), and I’ll probably discount Cult that day too in celebration (in case anyone put it on any wishlists and is hard up for cash). I am not actually very funny, so we’ll see how that goes.

Circling back to the point: I’ve seen neophyte gamemasters ask for advice on how to run games in genres they aren’t familiar with – like if one of their friends wants to play in a Star Wars or a vampire-themed game so they pick up a copy of a system, but they have no interest in it so beg on public forums for someone to quickly explain the basic premise so they can bash something together… and I won’t tell people not to do that. Do what you want – play what’s fun. And do try new things – don’t be too afraid to get out of your comfort zone! Running SWN made me a better game master, and I’m glad I ran it. I try and run a new system at least once a month. But I will say that being familiar with the media that’s influenced what you’re running does absolute wonders. Run what you know.

Or at least watch the Star Wars films first.

Back on my BS

My winter vacation is coming to a close tomorrow. I feel like I didn’t do half the things I wanted to, but I did accomplish a lot!

First and foremost: I’ve written a tabletop adventure (for OSE) under my business name, Bovidae Studios. It has been written, playtested, and the third draft has been sent to my editor for review (and removing my unnecessary verbiage – I am sure you noticed, but I am actually an extremely mediocre writer). I have a couple interior drawings to finish up, but otherwise, once I get that back and make some changes, I’ll let my spouse look it over and then send it for self-publishing via DriveThruRPG.

It’s very exciting! I put a lot of work into it! Is it good? Maybe. Who knows! It’s ~20 pages of actual content and it will cost $7.95 – it was going to be $10.00, but then someone else released something infinitely cooler, their magnum opus, for $7.95, so I decided maybe mine should be the same. There will also hopefully be a print edition (mostly I want to own it if I’m being honest) once that goes through DriveThru’s proofing process. I’m also starting work on my second adventure for release maybe in April! Both of these I will probably post to this blog when they are up, but probably won’t do any progress updates or anything (though I do post some updates aimlessly on the dice.camp Mastodon instance from time to time).

Otherwise, #Dungeon23 is a thing (thanks to Sean McCoy’s brain). It is supposed to be a year’s-long mega dungeon: one room a day, one floor per month, for a total of 365 rooms and 12 floors. As cool as this is… I don’t have the time for it. I have adventures to write, a day job that has nothing to do with tabletop, I’ve got art commissions on the side, I started working out three times per week, I’ve been doing vocal lessons and learning guitar on my own, and I’m supposed to be updating this blog… so I already fill up most of my free time!

That said, I still want to do it – so, as a compromise, I’m doing one room a week and will hopefully post my updates to this blog! The exact day of the week is uncertain – it will probably vary, but it should be interesting. I’m doing it on paper, but I’ll digitise along the way and toss it all together as a PDF at the end.

Lastly, I accidentally overwrote this blog’s WordPress theme and it messed up the navigation menu. I can’t be arsed to fix it right now, but maybe I’ll get around to it.

That’s all for now! More posts to come…

Actually, why don’t I like D&D5e?

Somewhat related to the last post, Leaving D&D5e, I should probably specify why I don’t like the system. I hadn’t actually grokked the reality of my feelings until earlier this morning, where I managed to write something in a conversation that I think was incredibly thoughtful and truly struck a chord as to answering why I don’t like the system, beyond a simple “it doesn’t do what I want out of a game” or “the rules are broken”, and even reflects on why I don’t like FATE Core, my problems with my home system of Numenera, and why my review of Ryuutama was so lukewarm!

Someone asked, a bit tongue-in-cheek, while we were discussing alternative systems, well “which [system] is the objective best”? The answer, of course, is that there is no such thing, and my friend replied as such – “there’s no objectively best system because they all answer different questions”. Therefore, then… The problems with systems come in when they fail to answer the questions they say they want to answer. This is where you get gripes with D&D5e, Shadowrun, etc. – most of my disliked systems are not disliked for their mechanics specifically, but because the mechanics and goals of the system seem to have failed to connect. Ryuutama had a weird amount of lethality to it for something that was thematically Ghilbi-esque, Numenera‘s combat and initiative system makes no sense for the logic-based rulings over rules guidelines, and FATE Core (review incoming)’s problem is that none of the mechanics actually work together to create something cohesive that answers goals. You hear time and time again from people who have played Shadowrun that they “love Shadowrun, hate the system” because the mechanics are just not conducive to the theme.

Recently I played Scum & Villainy, a “FitD” system that probably could merit its own review post, but I’ll just bust a quick one out here: I loved it. It did exactly what it was meant to do and the mechanics and the gameplay went perfectly hand in hand with the theme of the game we were playing (‘idiot assholes do shady jobs in space’). But I actually do not often care for PbtA-built systems, which is where FitD was born out of – but I liked this because it worked well. I love Numenera and nearly loathe Cypher because the system caters to Numenera‘s settings and goals and disconnecting the cyphers from that setting makes Cypher, well, not as impactful. It doesn’t feel good as a universal system.

What questions is D&D5e trying to answer? What are the goals of the system? One could say that it is in the name, ‘Dungeons’ and ‘Dragons’, but plenty of other bloggers have gone into the problems of the game no longer teaching people how to play or run dungeons, and how the mechanics of attrition seem to be fading away in favour of more narrative approaches. I think in order to become a better system in future iterations, the designers really need to lean into that more and change the rules to accomplish the goals that the designers actually want to achieve. But, they probably won’t, because D&D5e makes a lot of money as is… and that is why I think people should get away from 5e, not because it’s just, completely bad, or wrong, but because it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to be doing, and you have so many options that actually do a) what “D&D” is supposed to be and/or b) what you want to do in a game.

Hello World!

…or something like that. At any rate, I figure I’m officially cool enough to start a blog on this blessed first day of the 29th year of my life. Welcome to some sort of critter’s thoughts on tabletop and the like – maybe I’ll post some reviews of games I’ve played, or what I’m working on – who knows! Does anybody care? Maybe, maybe not, but I’d like to document it for my own posterity. My spouse says I ought to post about our cat, Nemo, instead, so perhaps he’ll show up later.

For now, I ought to just introduce myself, a little? I am Beef (no, not my real name) and I like running tabletop games. I have been leaning into OSR (“old school renaissance”) games of late, and while I don’t necessarily focus too much on dungeon crawls and lethal combat, I appreciate the down-to-earth and logic-focused ethos that the systems embody. Games I prefer to run tend to be focused on character morality, backstory elements and relationships, usually with my players creating the central narrative thread out of their actions rather than my whims as a writer. I do have a tendency to cut corners a bit too much with that in mind, however. I definitely think I’m more of a “tabletop” hobbyist than a “d&d” hobbyist (in fact, I rarely run D&D 5e) – I playtest a new system every two weeks with my dedicated group of GM colleagues on Wednesdays, play as the incompetent – but well-meaning, noble seafaring pirate Alfonse Belle on Sundays (7th Sea 1e), had spent the last three years playing a drunken washed-up entertainer in Numenera on Monday evenings., and am starting up a curious expedition into space with Stars Without Number on Thursdays this month that I’ll probably be talking about the most.

See you all soon with… several upcoming already-drafted posts!