Tag: tabletop

Stars Without Number Campaign 1: Session II

Another week, another night in Las Vegas – err, I mean, the J’Ordain Casino… If any of my players are reading this, stop here, as I do kind of get into some potential future tangents in the post below, so spoilers abound! Don’t ruin it for yourself, okay? Other warnings for the general public include mentions of prostitution, drugs, and gambling.

Anyway, now that our group has gotten their feet wet, the game has opened up to full sandbox play! From here on out, I’m along for the ride, and am mostly just improvising based on hex keys and loose mini adventure ideas. I ran a few iterations of Sectors Without Number, added in the places the group had visited in areas they made sense, and then created a cute little mouseover hex map in Foundry. To finish it off, I did some drawing up of the three main factions – we have the Space Mafia (I need a better name), the Interstellar Influence Navy (the galaxy-wide ‘space police’), both of whom will remain on the hexes they’ve been placed on until interacted with, and the courier company that Blanche and Hermes used to work with (I’ll randomise their potential encounter location every session). There are also the space whales, which move around the hex map as the players do (I roll for them), and are mostly there just for fun. Rare that they actually manage to make it to a system – rarer still that the party will interact with them. But just knowing they exist fills me with joy, so I don’t mind if the two groups never meet.

I don’t own the rights to any of these little token images, so forgive me.

The session started with some housekeeping (they decided to name their ship the Joint Enterprise), picking their next destination (I didn’t even need to list off the other potential hexes, the players just really, really wanted to get shitfaced and gamble at the casino station), and then the weekly audio transmission log. These audio transmission logs will contain news bulletins, direct messages, etc., and happen every spike drive drill the group takes (so, first thing every session, roughly). Depending on who is staffing the communications area, they’ll also have access to their personal emails from their dataslabs/compads. Caitlin was manning the comms station today, and listened to two direct messages from Basil (“Hi. i’m going surgery few days. thanks support.” and “p.s. guys rescue is ok, paying for”) as well as a few ‘spam’ messages: from Geico insurance regarding their spike drive, some lottery winnings that the group definitely didn’t enter, and a reminder on student loans payments that Caitlin opted to skip through.

Funny thing, the Geico insurance notice is actually legitimate. In two more jumps, and after two more warning notices, their tier 1 spike drive will fail. If the group actually listens to the message, they’ll find out that they can get it swapped out for free, or a potential upgrade for 50% off. The group has enough money to pay for a replacement outright, so even if they continue to ignore the warning, they’ll survive – but it will put an awful dent in their funds. They may even potentially upgrade their drive before then, totally unaware of the discount offer… On the other hand, taking up the replacement offer comes with other problems: if you recall, the group swapped the ship’s identification in order to go off the radar, and is currently not recognisable by the courier company. But if the group takes up the insurance offer, the courier company it originally belonged to will get pinged, alerting them to perhaps something fishy going on – beyond just a potentially dead pilot and blasted ship!

But we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it. After spending several days in metaspace, the crew arrives at the J’Ordain Casino, a buzzing space station locale of drinks, drugs, and sexual freedom. There are flight crews spelling out dazzling advertisements, laser beams, thick clouds of cigarette smoke flooding the halls, and a race course around the station for ships to make use of (more on that later). Prep-wise, I pulled a few gambling card-games-turned-dice-games from the internet and kept them on hand (blackjack and poker) and drafted up a little 3d6 slot machine mechanic in a few minutes so the group could do any of those if they liked. Pillboi and Blanche opted to play a few rounds of Poker – Blanche losing terribly and borrowing credits from Pillboi, who was trying to sell drugs on the sly to the rest of the tables. At the end of it all, the two headed off to the bar and came out 100 credits richer each (though how much of Blanche’s money was actually Pillboi’s is up for debate). Caitlin wanted to schmooze up some rich folk, and went straight to the bar area – grabbing the business card of a big beautiful drug-smoking woman named Clarice, who has been spearheading a longtime industrial project a few systems out creating a gigantic solar array. Caitlin convinced her to exchange contact information and gained a new potential big client for their future drug enterprise once they get their hands on the psychoactive plant in Terra Purr’ma. Caitlin also offered her body for sale, and spent a few hours with the woman (but unfortunately ended up breaking even after needing to pay for Clarice’s drycleaning due to a wine-spilling incident). Hermes, meanwhile, scoped out the place for some money-making opportunities… he had worked on the slot machines before, and knew how they worked, but preferred to try counting cards at the blackjack table (I improvised how that worked and I’m not sure I loved how I ran it, so I’ll probably revisit the idea later). The staff got suspicious after a while but not enough to want to do anything about it, and he slunk off to the bar after a while to meet Caitlin and the rest.

With the four of them enjoying some drinks alone in Clarice’s private booth (she left to take a call), an announcement played over the casino’s intercom system: the betting counter was now open for bets on the next ship race starting in a few hours. This race is interesting- the casino is hosting a few well-renowned ‘Formula 68’ racing pilots for the week, and one particular pilot, Pelkan Wales, is an almost guaranteed win (the house is expecting to pay out a fair amount of cash on this, but it’s worth it for the advertising and sponsorship money).

The four hatch a plan – they immediately want to rig the race, and manage to grab some pit uniforms for Hermes and Blanche to head down and mess with the ships. They don’t think they can make it so one person wins, but they do think that they can spread out their bets and just prevent Wales from winning. The first uniform they drugged a nearby employee and stole his outfit. For Blanche, they tried to grab a very sketchy, nervous catfolk’s uniform the same way but failed in trying to knock him out with a frying pan, and he slunk off (strangely, not alerting security of the incident…), but ended up just sneaking into the staff lockers to grab a set. The two of them (mostly) get away without suspicion while doing this, and thanks to some incredible rolls down at the shipyard, get to not only call attention to some much-needed repairs on one of the “worst drivers in the circuit” (Gioli Brusso)’s ship, but also sabotage Pelkan’s in such a way that he struggles to handle it. The race is on – Pelkan falls behind, and (I did roll for this), the worst driver in the circuit (thanks in part to the repairs on his ship), pulls ahead for the win with 13:1 odds, netting the party a 23000 credit profit on their bets (they spread them out across the other drivers). The group quickly decides to cut and run, just in case, and take off in their ship, ending the session.

Overall, the session was fine- a bit of a slow pace today, but most folks were tired and I honestly had a lot of fun regardless! I loved the characters I came up with (the racers, the pit staff, Clarice – all improvised but all have clear motivations and backgrounds). Though, I am never sure how actually-playing-gambling-games-with-dice feels during a session, but everyone seemed to like these ones fine so I think it worked out. I do think I ought to flesh out the factions a lot more by next session – I got away with it this time as they haven’t been interacted with yet, but I’ll need to get a clear grasp on their galactic game plan to help shepherd the players into potential meaningful antagonists and allies. I also fear that I’m not going to be able to obey the “law of conservation of NPCs”, so I’ll need to keep careful track of the names this session and figure out how I can incorporate them later.

So, what’s on the menu for next week? Well, Wales was suspected of driving under the influence due to the poor handling of his ship during the race – the next audio transmission logs will contain a few news stories about his ongoing DUI investigation and scandal (he actually was under the influence of both drugs and alcohol from the casino). This doesn’t directly impact the party, per see, but I think it may open up some opportunities for their drug dealing operation in yet-unknown ways. I’ll leave it to them to think about it. Also, that sketchy catfolk who didn’t alert security of the woman who literally tried to knock him out with a frying pan (and then played it off as a joke)? Well… who knows what happened with that, but during the chaos of the surprise win upset, the casino happened to be robbed, and over ten million credits are missing from their internal digital banking system. There’s a bounty out for those that have any information regarding the incident…

Stars Without Number Campaign 1: Session I

I’ve spent the last several weeks getting my Stars Without Number campaign going and yesterday was our first session after player vetting, interviews, a practice one-shot, and character creation/premise set up. This first part will be a bit long as there are character introductions and whatnot. I plan on mixing a bit of narrative play with my processes as a games master, and just writing the session summaries as I find the most fun to write, rather than to meet any kind of entertainment goal. The campaign is anticipated to last around 10-20 sessions at most, though we’ll see how well it lends itself to a natural end. Additionally, as a forewarning, I will be abandoning a fair bit of SWN’s default lore in favour of a more sci-fi kitchen sink space-opera tale, but some parts of it are kept to keep things coherent and to have a solid foundation to go off of. I also do not claim any of the following tales or designs are a reflection of how anything would actually function in the real world scientifically or physically, though I do try to keep it consistent and fair and how I would think things would work out logically. But I’m not here to do extensive science homework – I’m here to just tell people where to aim their sick laser pistols. My sincerest apologies in advance to the hardcore science fiction nerds, the physicists, and the chemists in the world.

With that out of the way, let’s get on with the show! Warnings for today: suffocation, drugs, alcohol, and human death & suffering ahead. The backstories are still pretty loose to start, but our cast consists of:

Blanche (23, she/her), the former “Cat’s Cradle” courier company driver. Pilot. Uplifted actual cat. Ran off with her company’s free merchant and cargo, and decided a life of smuggling drugs will get more money for her poor family back home. Also, kind of doesn’t want to go to jail after stealing the ship. Currently presumed dead by her former employer.

Hermes Hurtwell (18, he/him), our child prodigy software engineer (worked for Cat’s Cradle) turned space hacker. graduated young and entered the workforce too early – he quit his company in absolute rage and figures he can make better use of his skills on the black market. Not on good terms with his former employer.

Caitlin Wynter (23, she/her), a psychic goth theatre kid – took out a student loan through some sort of space mafia-type business and now they’re after her head. Not on good terms with said space mafia.

“Pillboi” (late 20s, he/him), resident ‘medical professional’. Sells drugs. Has a sick neon mohawk. Dips into his own supply, and would like to use the party’s free merchant courier ship to fund his new entrepreneurial operation of drug growing and smuggling. The rest of the crew seems to be on board. Has past connections with space mafia.

Let’s set the stage: it’s New Year’s Eve, December 31st 3199, and these four future entrepreneurs are having a party to ring in the new century. It’s Hermes’ 18th birthday, he quit his job that morning, and he’s getting shitfaced at the bar complaining up a storm about how piss poor the processes were. Caitlin, enthused by his goth depressing demeanour and having lost her theatre friends in the massive crowds of people, hits him up to share a few drinks, as a nearby courier, Blanche, attempts to find the owner of a package (unsuccessfully). Exhausted from her shift, she joins the two of them in complaining about their career situations. The three of them have a progressively more and more depressing conversation about the state of the economy, where an enterprising Pillboi steps in to offer them a little something to cheer them up. After a bit of back and forth, the four of them continue their bar crawl late into the night and eventually come to a brilliant heavily intoxicated decision: the three of them will take Blanche’s work ship and join Pillboi on his drug selling business and become the “highest” self-employed entrepreneurs in the galaxy. There are rumours of a plant on Blanche’s home planet, Terra Purr’ma, that has interesting properties when ingested by humans (as opposed to the native uplifted cat folk). Taking a few doses of a substance only brought out for ‘special occasions provided by Pillboi, the four of them black out.

…They wake up in a random part of space a few days later – clearly having gotten up to some sort of business, and only vaguely recalling their plans to become “self-employed”. but they’ve gone too far now – Blanche won’t be able to keep her job after running off with the ship, Hermes and Catilin have nowhere else to go, and Pillboi is excited at their future prospects. They spend almost two weeks getting the remaining cargo illegally sold off, and scrape the id from the courier ship, upgrading it to something a little more befitting of budding space adventurers with the money earned. They have a hefty 25 000 credits leftover to kickstart their pharmaceuticals business and decide to start getting a laboratory set up.

A lot of the above scenes were roleplayed out for fun, and to get folks’ feet wet in figuring out their characters, but had been decided ahead of time during character creation by the entire group as the premise-buy in (they said the concept of ‘The Hanover: In Space’ was hilarious) as to how their adventure started. I did not plan on running for a group of drug-smuggling bastards, but I appreciated the energy and I’m down for it. Please note that I, along with many of my players, haven’t done anything more than drink a few shots in my life, so a lot of the drug nonsense is truly nonsense. We plan on handling addiction fairly tastefully but a lot of it will be played for laughs as far as the party is concerned (not so much for my NPCs). It’s a group of ragtag idiots in a very harsh, very real and unforgiving world. So, from here, I set them down on a nearby planet, Kalmar, to acquire some materials to set up their lab, and gave them a bit of a primer for the locale:

Kalmar, is a planet in which breathable oxygen is at a premium. The dominant gas is sulfuric; if there was water on the surface, it’s evaporated due to the greenhouse effects reflective sulfur clouds would cause, and most of it is imported heavily from off-planet. Anyone venturing out into the sandy wastes needs a hefty oxygen supply. Settlements are either pod-like or underground where it’s cooler and water may still be available – however, they need to be fairly resistant to damage against the tunnelling, massive worms that occupy most of the surface of the planet. The largest settlement on the planet is also the oldest and has seen a long period of wear and repair, at this point looking as though it is barely held together with scraps.

The planet itself is rich in valuable minerals as well as a unique resource – calvinite, which is used to create speciality ship jump drives, among other things (such as purification for certain pharmaceuticals…), and day labourers are paid well for the dangerous conditions. Kalmar itself did not have a native sapient population but has been since colonised by a wide variety of intelligent life forms from across the galaxy. Most of the labourers on the planet are the ‘Futzes’, whose unique bodies can quickly adapt to extreme temperature changes and require very little water; and as such, do not require expensive habitation equipment to venture outside of settlements (though they still need a mobile oxygen source to breathe, and protection from the toxic gas). That said, as oxygen is rationed, a large number of the population has suffered severe health problems, which has put most of the settlers in extreme medical debt.

The mines, as the players arrive, are closed as of yesterday – the giant sandworms have unfortunately started their mating season much, much earlier than expected and the main major mine had to do an emergency shut down. Most of the valuable minerals have been pulled, and due to the perceived upcoming shortage, none of the calvinite that the players are after are for sale. However, a young Futz named Basil is ready to offer the players exclusive ‘back-alley’ access to the mines. It’ll be dangerous, with the worms about, and they’ll have to pay him for equipment and oxygen supplies (he’s trying to fund his brain surgery after an accident), but they can go in. A lot of the material is already mined, they just have to hope that they’re lucky enough to find cases of it left behind by the fleeing miners.

As a GM, I looked into a number of ways to handle this mission – I could put a fair amount of prep into it as thanks to our agreed-upon premise and time skip, I could start them in media res at Basil’s ‘shop’ preparing to go in, rather than risk them faffing about with other decisions, so we could kick things off with a bang before the sandbox opened up, and get them in a situation with clear goals. I decided to go with a miniature hexcrawl – it would allow them to learn the process of the hexcrawl, how I roll per hex at a smaller and faster pace, which will help them when we move to the larger hex-based space map when travelling to various planets (I’m going with the Planetville trope, here, for this campaign), and it gives a good look into the more nuanced approach to attrition and resource-management required in OSR systems. I think as new players (3/4 have only ever really played D&D5e) it’s a good way to showcase the style of play a fair bit. It’s also, technically, my first time using a crawl-styled structure and I wanted a space where I too could really grok the mechanics before moving to a larger space where things might have a different scale, and larger stakes.

a reference sketch of the miniature hexcrawl I sent them on. I like tracking things on paper.

I started with 60 hexes (later adjusted to I think 62 just to allow for some spacing issues on my VTT, Foundry) and then started decorating. Basil would send the players through one exit (bottom centre), and mention that while there are two other exits (on the left and right sides) that could be used in the case of emergencies, this was the only exit that he could guarantee would be unguarded, so no one would run the risk of being arrested for trespassing (and potentially theft). I wanted multiple exits because one of the main mechanics I decided on was for every hex moved, there would be a 10%+ increase of a sandworm tunnelling in and collapsing the tunnel behind them (so they wouldn’t be able to move back to the previous hex). Somewhat inspired by the ‘churn’ mechanics of The Expanse RPG, (and out of a back-and-forth discussion with other GMs), I basically tallied up the percentage change and rolled a d10, resetting the total chance to 0% after a worm was triggered. Each hex required 1 unit of oxygen per player to navigate (Basil sold each unit at 50 credits apiece), and they could expend an additional unit to dig through caved-in sections, do a more thorough exploration of the hex, etc. I scattered a number of hexes where 1d4 units of calvinite could be found, as well as three 1d4x2 caches of extra oxygen throughout. The players had two carts that each held 30 units of material (either oxygen or calvinite). I made it two carts as I wanted to give them the option to split up and cover more ground if they wanted (which they did opt to do). There were eight encounter hexes which I rolled on a table for, and minecarts that went one way, taking them through the caves faster, but the players wouldn’t know where they would end up and would need to ensure they had enough oxygen to get back from wherever the carts had taken them (somewhat inspired by Snakes & Ladders).

The players opted to purchase the full 3000 credits worth of 60 units of oxygen, confident they could make the money back with the acquisition of enough calvinite, and split into teams of two – giving them 15 hexes of movement each, barring any complications. The groups also had access to suits that, if the players ran out of oxygen, would inject a chemical into their bodies that would save their lives and allow them to subsist for a time without (but at the cost of severe lung and brain damage). I wanted to include these because, as helpfully pointed out by a fellow GM, “is it really fun if the players all suffocate to death alone in caves during the first session”? Probably not, so best to have some ’emergency contraceptive’ in the case of an accidental TPK. Back to the narrative:

Pillboi and Hermes trudged cautiously through the caverns – there wasn’t much to see in this area of the recently-abandoned mineshafts, but they had two nerve-wracking run-ins with tunnelling cave worms, and opted to adjust their route to proceed more carefully. Pillboi heard whispers in a room up ahead – and found two other rival ‘entrepreneurs’ scouring the caves in discount suits (presumably also sold by Basil) in search of calvinite. Knives out, and pistols drawn, the two pairs nervously faced off in a stalement, neither interested in risking their lives over some rocks. Hermes and Pillboi decided to imitate security guards, checking the caves for straggling miners, and convinced the two men to give up their stolen goods in exchange for additional oxygen to assist in their swift exit from the caves. With the agreement in place, and tensions lowering, the two groups split off in opposite directions – only for Hermes and Pillboi to find themselves stuck at a large crevasse, their only change of passage being to backtrack and dig through the previously collapsed tunnels in order to make their way back. Arriving at the entrance with just three units of calvinite, and barely two units of oxygen to spare, the two waited patiently for their other half of the party to arrive.

While this was happening, Blanche and Caitlin were heading in the opposite direction. Immediately upon splitting with Pillboi and Hermes, the two found themselves in a room filled with shallow puddles of water. Testing for acid, they safely trudged through the harmless brackish ponds, but not without causing a fair amount of noise to echo through the tunnels… Not wanting to risk the unwanted attention of the sandworms, or worse things, the two opted to ride the rail carts deeper into the mines. This proved fruitful, as they found several caches of supplies, including some mining equipment and spare oxygen tanks, and three units of calvinite. Making their way back towards the exit, the two heard the wheezing, rasping breath of a slowly suffocating unknown. The two looked at each other, and looked at their supply… they were too deep in the mines, and couldn’t afford to provide any oxygen or assistance to the dying one. Blanche and Caitlin hurriedly avoided the person in trouble, and snuck off into the dark, the desperate breathing ceasing quietly behind them. Not completely heartless, however, the two found another twitching, desperate soul that had used their emergency injection to stall their death, and loaded them onto the cart, sacrificing some of their cargo space. The two managed to meet up with Pillboi and Hermes at last, narrowly escaping one final collapsing cavern behind them, the worms tunnelling away, leaving the mine inaccessible from this entrance…

We called it there – a good 2.5-hour-long session. The person in need of medical aid was handed over to Basil to escort to a nearby medical facility, their goods brought to their ship and borrowed carts returned. XP was given out, and character advancements are to be processed over the upcoming week prior to the next session.

There are a few things I’d change: I would probably telegraph the ‘churn’ mechanics a bit more – no harm done, but I think it would have ramped up the suspense/stakes a fair bit. I think the number of encounters could have been increased on the board – there were a few too many empty hexes (but the length of the session overall was also quite well-paced, so I’m not sure about this one). I went back and forth between each group to give each of them equal screentime, though at one point a player had to grab a salad and it threw the balance a little off-kilter when continuing to play around it, I think it all worked out in the end. I would definitely do a 2 hexes-per group alternation in the future. One hex is a bit too short, especially if nothing is there, but more than two hexes mean things can drag on (especially if one side runs into a lot of encounters). I do want to keep timekeeping consistent between the groups as each one can affect the whole map with cave-ins. Overall, the numbers seemed fair, and other than potentially tweaking the value of everything depending on the campaign being run, I think it overall came out great! My players (one of whom is a GM himself) thought it was an excellent structure to run the session’s goals in. One other thing that was a bit unprecedented was the group wanted to keep the oxygen tanks and suits for ‘future missions’ – which I suppose I now ought to plan on including! I think I’ll probably run something similar underwater in a future session, and see if I can improve on the design a bit…

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.

Leaving D&D5e

Woof, this title’s a bit of a misnomer, but it gets the idea across. This is a bit of a spicy one. As an early caveat, if you like D&D5e, keep playing it, and don’t tell me why it’s great. This blog post isn’t for you.

The first game system I ever played was Numenera, and I played it for about 2 years before moving on to trying other systems. I’d call myself fortunate, in a way, that my introduction to the hobby wasn’t Dungeons & Dragons, but for the most part, a lot of people’s first game system is going to be Dungeons and Dragons 5e (the current edition as of this writing). Dungeons & Dragons is arguably the very first TTRPG series to come out of wargames, and it makes sense why it has continued to be a mainstay in the tabletop community – it has clout. More recently, Podcasts and shows like Critical Role or Stranger Things have really brought a lot of new people to the hobby, and if you look on any ‘Looking for Group’ style community, such as on roll20, a huge majority of the people looking for games are going to be playing or running D&D 5e.

And it makes sense – D&D was always fairly easy to grok the premise of: everybody knows now what ‘medieval fantasy’ is. You have dragons, heroes, elves, wizards and all that stuff – you don’t need to explain to your grandma what a dragon is. She knows. While there is a lot of different worldbuilding in 5e with the Forgotten Realms setting, a lot of it is still on that Lord of the Rings-esque premise, and it’s easy to know what’s going on. Genres like sci-fi are also easy to grok, but it’s still a “nerdy” niche that a lot of people are going to be unfamiliar with past a certain point. Medieval fantasy is easy. Numenera combines the two into something truly strange – and getting people into understanding the setting takes effort, an effort a lot of people aren’t necessarily going to want to look into before starting a game – sure, (though I will say it wasn’t required of me in my introduction).

However, the mechanical rules of the game are a different beast. If people say that D&D5e is “easy to pick up and learn”, they may be referring to the above setting grok, but the game itself is hard to figure out. It’s not beginner-friendly. The game has baggage, rules that don’t make sense, misprints, overcomplicated sections that everyone has trouble with (grappling, action economy), and when someone comes to me and says “5e is great, it’s so easy to get new people to play it” I think those people are wrong. And normally, I’d say to each their own, but tabletop games are such a wonderful hobby, and if someone tries running D&D as a new Dungeon Master, and they find it hard, they’re going to think that any other game system is just as difficult to get into, and they’ll either quit the hobby altogether, or continue to try and desperately pull the things they want out of the hobby out of an unsuitable system for their needs and spend their days feeling frustrated.

D&D5e is popular for a reason. If you don’t know anyone else interested in TTRPGs, it’s a great way to find new players and friends to play with. I’ve run it for an Open Table before just because I wanted that cast of rotating weekly players (though now I might run Moldvay’s D&d instead). But it’s not my go-to for tabletop gaming, and I don’t think it’s helpful to encourage everyone to start with D&D 5e, or to tell them that it’s the ‘easiest to get into’, because it sets up that new GM for failure if they meet any sort of resistance (which in D&D 5e’s case, could be very often). There are so many different game systems out there that are so easy to get into – literally you can pick up and finish Honey Heist as if it were a board game in less than an hour or two, and get the idea of what a tabletop game is supposed to feel like. It sets the wrong kind of precedent for the TTRPG hobby as a whole, that tabletop games are a lot of work and heavy-duty commitment; so many games don’t have near as many rules as D&D 5e does or require that 4-hour-one-a-week-for-two-years commitment.

I hear time and time again from people who love D&D5e who say that trying a new system sounds hard. They say that it’s hard because they look back at all the work they’ve put into learning to play 5e (or 4e, or 3.5e, even) and think they have to put all that work in again. It’s not fair to say ‘most people don’t have the time to invest in a new system’ because often the systems being recommended actually have a very low cost of investment to start. To quote a friend, “there are some vicious cycles going on in this space too, where the thing is popular, so people play it, and because people play it, it becomes popular” and I think that discouraging anyone, especially yourself, from trying other systems under the premise that it’s ‘too much work’, or that D&D’s popularity and rapport are more important than anything mechanical, doesn’t help break that cycle, is setting a poor standard with D&D 5e, and it doesn’t help the hobby grow.

Old School D&D & Looking For Group

Okay, I couldn’t come up with a good title for this, so that’s what you get.

A bit of context; recently (late last November), a campaign I’d been in for the last three years finally broke down to communication issues. I left, mourned, and thought about what I was going to do next.

I’d never actually done the whole ‘Looking for Group’ thing before with internet strangers – my real-life Monday campaign had me initially invited to by a coworker, and the games I began running online, I initially pulled players from friends, close-knit club groups, and friends of those friends. I’ve played with ‘strangers’ online – but all those times it was finding them by accident through mutual communities like Discord. There was never a truly anonymous recruitment process. I’ve never really been through the whole ‘application & interviews’ ring as a player.

So I’ve been hitting up a few ads and throwing myself out there to mixed success – a couple interviews here, a few non-responses there, and I think I’ve found a couple personable potential spaces where something really nice and new will start. Perhaps I’ll even get to play Burning Wheel. But I’m not here to talk about those. I’m here to talk about this:

He re-worded this every other day or so.

First thing’s first: I like Old School Essentials. OSR games are my jam. But I have so many questions – first, how old is this guy? He must have shared a urinal with Gygax himself. The “This is real D&D” is a Schrodinger’s problem: is this guy an old elitist or is he just offering a very specific experience (one I’d love to have)? My spouse says I should play with people in my age bracket. He’s probably right. But this could be a unique opportunity! Against my better judgement, knowing I can leave at any time, and not wanting to make assumptions of a person I’d never met, I decided to message him. The internet is all anonymous, after all. I sent him a bit of a long-winded request, asking to chat, maybe he could give some more information? He says nothing and responds with a Discord invite:

T U E.

Sweat beads on my brow as I click join. I steel myself. This is the proverbial lion’s den. No session 0. No expectations. No vetting, no interviews. Why does he trust me? Who am I? Where am I? Time will tell.

I wait a while, expecting a greeting, but none came. Before introducing myself, I decide to scroll up and see what the chat is like. There’s only one channel – the default Discord’s ‘#general’ and all I see are confirmations of time, regretfully missing a session or two, a few ‘Happy Holidays’ over the last Winter, and weekly Zoom invitations.

So, this DM is bringing people into a Discord, inviting them to his hosted Foundry game, and then sending Zoom invitations for voice and video. Why Zoom? Discord and Foundry both have integrated video and voice calling. Who is this man, really?

I’ll soon find out. The very next day I’m set to join in the session with another new player. There is no information given other than the time. I show up slightly embarrassed on being a bit late (had a call to attend) and roll my character as per his instructions. It’s actually kind of incredible – he talks about how he doesn’t use the fancy Foundry system designed for and instead had made his own system entirely from scratch. I respect it. Things feel both smooth and rustic at the same time. We don’t introduce ourselves over voice (perhaps because of my ten-minute lateness) and we immediately start playing the game.

There was a chuckle when I rolled my stats. This Fighter won’t last long.

It was…. fantastic?

I won’t get too into the details of the session, it was very standard fare. You begin in a tavern. Puzzles. A crypt. Arguments on ten-foot poles. We put on a cursed ring. A wizard, a thief, a fighter. But that’s exactly why it was so fantastic; I truly felt transported back into 1980s-90s Dungeons & Dragons. Despite the technology running it for us over the internet, the lack of physical character sheets… everything about the game really felt like how I’d seen it and described it being played back in the day. I felt as though I was actually fulfilling a sense of nostalgia (though I had been far too young to have played back then). There was definitely a sort of magic to it. I wouldn’t compare it to any other game – I probably don’t recommend this to anyone looking for something that isn’t “D&D in the late 90s like how I played as a wee lad”. But the charm of it and the transparency of the DM in what we did (he was “adversarial”, but he was also a good teacher, walking us through traps) overall felt good. He was a great DM – and weirdly, one of the best voice actors I’ve ever heard in my life.

I’ve been envious of the old GMs and DMs. Folks with decades of experience under their belt – going through the systems over the years and watching the hobby evolving. They got to be there for the original tropes, they’re able to build off of that. I’m remarkably green to the whole thing despite my enthusiasm. Being there made me kind of feel like I was able to have some of that. While I’m still cautious (he’s old, I’m young and queer – we certainly didn’t give our pronouns) – I have a lot to learn from this guy.

I’m going back next week.

Vetting Players & SWN Interview Sessions

My ‘interview’ one shot to recruit some new players for my upcoming Stars Without Number (‘SWN’) campaign went live last night. I enjoy reviewing my sessions after as it allows me to keep track of notes as well as areas where I can improve, so this is more of a personal exercise than a public one, but hopefully, there’s something in it people could find value in.

After a year of running tabletops, I’ve really started refining my vetting process. Not everyone works well at every table (even I would be a terrible fit for plenty of games out there) and being picky and thorough with who you play with is important. Along with private text-based ‘interviews’ (read: me just asking them questions about tabletop I find important), I like to actually play with folks once or twice in single-session games to get a read on how they’d be long-term. Additionally – if you find that you don’t gel with someone at the table, the idea that not being able to play games with someone isn’t reflective of your relationship outside the game is a pretty darn healthy attitude to have. After a handful of horror stories and my desire to maximise fun and minimise the amount of work I have to do, I feel that while my vetting process is a little lengthy it’s always worth it in the end for formal campaigns.

This was my second time running this particular scenario, ‘Free Rain’ by Dominic Moore, (while I made several amendments and additions to make the transitions and plot a bit easier, I do recommend the module!) and so the prep was smooth as butter. Honestly, with the amount of work I put into it and having run it with my playtest group previously, I had all the info I needed and more to get into the game.

As for mistakes: I kind of regret being lax on the character sheets – I let folks come as they were and created them at the table, but it’s faster if I can punch them into Foundry ahead of time. All was fine because one person was going to be an hour late (talked in advance, all kosher) so I had that hour to do character creation with everyone else, but it still slowed a little when I got to make their one PC. In a campaign, doing character creation together is important (maybe I’ll touch on this later, though it’s been done before) but for one-shots, I find that getting characters done slightly ahead of time is just always better (unless you know the system front to back). You can still do connections as a group, but having the stats nicely done up makes things easier.

Since we started late I had to cut the session a smidge short, but I just had to narrate what would have been the last like 20 minutes in 30 seconds, so no fun lost or anything. The pacing was very good on my part in terms of how long the one-shot was supposed to be (~3 hours, we had about 2.5 hours of actual play-time), though I might have let the introduction roleplay drag on a bit too long (but folks were having fun and I don’t want to curb engagement this early).

Also pointed out by one player, I should have explained my house rule side initiative better – I sort of glossed over it and skipped its tactical benefits. I do wish I was more familiar with my system’s toolkit as a whole too – I’m still somewhat new to SWN’s ruleset and I’ll need to work on it. The narrative/improv one-shot prep was there but I definitely ought to brush up on the game rules so I never have to even think about glancing at the book or making stuff up on the fly. That said – things went… great! Probably in the top 10 sessions I’ve run. I slowed a little during the combat section (but it was also the very tail end of the night) though that ties back into knowing my toolkit and having more headspace to focus on the narrative.

As for players – I had THREE quiet background players and TWO brighter louder players. I mostly was interviewing the two spotlight players and one of the quiet players, so the focus was on them instead of the two players I had already. This meant my existing two quiet players that I already vetted sort of fell by the wayside. I’d definitely pay a little more care to them in a formal campaign but I can see where the dynamics would go in a full group, and it’ll take some talking out to make sure everyone has equal screentime (or, equitable screentime). I also didn’t love running for five people – it’s a fair amount of extra handling, and with my preferred higher rate of conversation-based roleplay, the more time every individual has to talk during the session the better. It definitely confirmed that when I pick my final players I ought to go with four, not five.

All in all, an 8/10 session, and I have a lot of good information for moving forward with the campaign proper! For future entries in my campaign diary series, I will probably do proper session summary notes with little jokes and storylines, as well as future scenario ideas. My players ought to probably not read those, though! ;]

Game Mechanics as a Neutral Space

(AKA why I don’t love freeform roleplay). This is just a short thought from some conversations I was having earlier, so it isn’t all that fleshed out:

I like OSR (‘Old School Renaissance’) games. One of the main tenants of OSR games is ‘rulings over rules’ and there’s a focus on the GM as an impartial arbiter of decisions: while there are some rules, what is more important is focusing on good, consistent adjudicating based on player-skill.

However, rulings over rules could be a bit of a problem when it comes to dealing with people who ‘powergame’ (eugh, terminology nonsense again), defined here as folks whose primary source of fun is making the most powerful character as possible. Sometimes, these powergamers push rules, however – twisting things with vague wording or missing notes on contraindications to fuel their power fantasy. People pushing systems really sets off warning bells for me because it tells me up-front the kind of game they wanna play (very gamey), which is not the kind of game I want to play. It’s okay if some people like that, but it is not for me, and as a GM who operates under very rulings and logic/fairness rather than actual rules those players really wouldn’t work well at my table. They’ll just thrash about at rules that aren’t there… with no true constraints they feel like they can do anything, and the only thing stopping them is me, as the GM, and things start to look adversarial.

To this end, I find rules can be good tools, because they contain certain types of friction to in-game only: if someone wants to do x, the rules are telling them how far they can go, rather than me telling them how. If they have a problem, they can dislike the rules, but if it’s rulings, that dislike turns to disliking me, and my adjudications instead. This is why I don’t like totally rules-less systems: I don’t like having everything on me. I want some sort of barrier between my feelings and the players’ feelings in the form of game mechanics to reduce friction. I like something that tempers my own biases I bring to the table. Game mechanics end up being a neutral space – while most friction can be ironed out with communication, having something unbiased and in some form of rigidity is good for creativity as well as avoiding needing to deal with a lot of confrontation and heavier communication.

Part of why I like Numenera so much is because it directly addresses that in the corebook: “if a player has a problem with the rules not saying they can’t do something and asks you to show them where they’re wrong, point them here: they’re wrong” (paraphrased from memory, a little). It allowed flexibility while also providing a written constraint and advocated for me as the GM and my decisions. I always had a +1 to my justification, so to speak (though this didn’t help in tempering my own biases – there were other rules for that).

Of course, having someone butting heads over rules, rulings, and just generally shitting (or in my cat’s case – sitting) all over the game table is a whole other issue in general (and I just don’t play with those people to begin with), but this is useful food for thought and examining why I like having some rules if I ever get into a situation where I misjudged someone, am invited to a game or running at a convention where I don’t get to pick the other players, or if one-off miscommunication issues on rulings ever cropped up.

System Reviews: Ryuutama

I really ought to start this blog strong. But, the post I wrote (released yesterday) seems a bit too heavy and overwhelming for the first blog post, so I figure I should quickly just talk game reviews!

I did not run Ryuutama: Natural Fantasy Roleplay as a GM- it was run by one of my colleagues in my playtesting server so this is my perspective as a player (and having read through the rulebook after the fact). My basic understanding of Ryuutama is it is a travel/exploration-focused Ghilbi-esque TTRPG – sorry “TRPG – Table-Talk Role-Playing Game” with a bizarre amount of lethality and inventory management crush for its cutesy exterior. On to my general thoughts:

+ Worldbuilding together was great, though admittedly I ran a little late and missed a bit of it. Reminded me very much of Microscope–like worldbuilding and I had a lot of fun with that game!

+ I think the emphasis on travel is both a bane and a boon, to be honest – I feel as though travel is the weakest in most tabletop games in terms of mechanics and actually being familiar enough to be able to handle it as a GM. D&D5e doesn’t do travel well. Numenera doesn’t do travel well (though a new book on that is coming in the mail this month for me). A lot of popular tabletops just don’t do travel well (or, rather, it’s not the focus). Unless you’re a hexcrawl master like Justin from The Alexandrian, travel is probably one of the weakest points I’ve seen in other GMs (and in my own GMing). To that end, it was probably a good exercise, but it seemed like it would be tricky to run if you don’t already use a lot of travel elements in your other games. I typically just handwave most travel, and I’d really have to brush up on my skills if it was me running this. I also found it sort of boring. I would really like to see this pulled off by a GM who is experienced in running travel games just to see this system shining at its peak.

+ Unfortunately, during our one shot I was unable to experience the actual combat system, however, my character did nearly die twice anyway. This system is probably OSR-levels of realistically lethal.

+ Inventory management was weird. there’s a lot of encumbrance/weight and carrying capacity nonsense that the simulationist in me found fun, but it seems like a strange amount of crunch when the rest of the game has no crunch at all. I think I spent 80% of character creation organising my inventory, and then I never used any of it during our one-shot (I imagine in a full game it would have more use, but, alas)

+ I liked the condition mechanic (and accompanying roleplay expectations) a lot. Basically, for those unfamiliar, you roll certain stats to determine your ‘condition’ (how healthy/alert you are) for the day. A critical fumble/10+ score has other mechanics in-game, but for roleplay specifically, we were asked by our GM to play our characters according to what we rolled. In the games I run, I usually just ask players straight how they’re feeling that morning but I might incorporate similar things in other games. I will report back on my findings putting this into play elsewhere (fun note: I regularly rolled horribly on condition and enjoyed playing a very elderly frail of mind and might man).

+ Rolling different dice depending on your stats was very fun, and it gave a nice advantage while also still allowing you to do things quite poorly even if you were normally very good at it. I like being able to fail a lot. That said, as I wasn’t running the game I’m not sure how accurate the target # difficulty scaling is.

Personally: would I run this for anyone? No, probably not, it’s outside of my regular wheelhouse and I’m not sure it includes elements I find fun to run as a Game Master (a lot of overhead, travelling as a core mechanic). Would I play it again? Also… probably not? I wouldn’t say no, and it’s not bad, I do love the JRPG elements, and I appreciate some of the simulationist bits… but the setting and tonal dissonance of mechanics vs theme are… mediocre. It’s a perfectly average “TRPG”. I make no offence to those who enjoy the system, I can definitely see its appeal, and I’ll still recommend it to people who like travel and like simulationism, but I’ll mark this one down as ‘not for me’.

Define Your Terms

After having been involved more deeply in the hobby over the last year, I’ve been exposed to a lot of different ideas. From blogs like The Alexandrian to The Angry GM, or big companies like Monte Cook Games, there are a lot of game masters in the hobby that put their ideas out on the internet on how to run your best games. I’d like to collate some of their ideas, as well as what I’ve personally been exposed to in the hobby, into what I think I’ve realised is the most important thing about tabletop: healthy and honest communication. You need to spend a lot of time talking to each other.

“But Beef, my friends would rather play the game with me than waste time talking about things! We barely have any time to play!”

Well, surprise: you can’t play the game without talking about things. People might disagree with me on this, but those are always the same people who come to me with ‘problem players’ that are ruining their fun.  You aren’t wasting time by talking about things, you’re setting up the fun – just as how you would be far less frustrated by first reading the instruction manual before building a particularly complicated bit of IKEA furniture.

That said, it is a fair point that one does not want to spend hours of their dedicated playtime talking about things (especially if you are rather limited by other priorities). What we want to do, then, is simplify the process of communication so it can be done quickly and effectively and ensure everyone is on the same page without having eight hours of conversation for one hour of actual play.

—–

Bankuei talks about misconceptions in ‘the roots of the big problem’, the focus of the post was how a lot of game rules, in D&D particularly, aren’t written, and how everyone is playing a different game under the same name. And, in the follow up ‘a way out’ article, Bankuei discusses how getting onto the same page in what game we’re playing is how you solve that issue. I’d recommend reading them for a bit more context so that I won’t repeat things that aren’t my words here. However… while these issues are part of the communication problem, I am surprised that this article wasn’t taken any further – into specific terminology and definitions used in tabletop roleplaying games.

Players always seem to not know what they want in games – if you ask them outright, you either get a vague idea like ‘lots of roleplay’, or specific examples of situations and then we go and include those things in our games as game masters and find those same players just aren’t enjoying it. I’d argue that while part of it is just limited experience (maybe they thought they wanted to roleplay, but actually didn’t like it when they experienced it), or unintentional emotional dishonesty as discussed in Bankuei’s article here, the problem may actually just be us perceiving them not knowing what they want because they don’t use definitions, they used terminology, and the people involved in the conversation are using different definitions for the same terminology. For instance, I used ‘lots of roleplay’ as an example, but what does ‘roleplay’ even mean? Playing a character, maybe? But how do you play that character?

You see this across experienced GMs as well. Bankuei uses terminology instead of definitions throughout their articles and defines ‘narrativsm’ in a way that implies that the characters of the game are the focus, but if you look at a lot of ‘narrative-driven’ bloggers, you find that those are more often than not focused on a central plot thread and story put forward by the GM (characters making choices in it is important, but the characters’ stories still aren’t the focus as compared to the ‘main’ story). Matthew Colville talks about different kinds of players (and the problems with categorising them), but if you compare that to the Angry GM’s ‘different types of fun’ based on this psychology article, from which he changed the definitions of the terms to suit his needs, things start to get confusing because the categories begin to not only overlap, but they also contradict each other. Not only that, but Angry is clearly fixated on defining in more detail the type of fun he particularly enjoys (which is expected, and not a bad thing), and the other definitions end up lacking a lot of verisimilitudes. You can take all these terms and categories in isolation and they work, and the definitions are included, but as soon as you start talking to someone who has seen Colville’s video but has not read Angry GM’s article, and you have read the article but not seen the video, you start to run into problems where you think you are talking about the same things but you’re not. And this becomes a problem in communication where you start to debate definitions.

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a colleague about RAW (‘rules as written’) and RAI (‘rules as intended’) in games. They argued that RAW is not necessarily about reading it literally but thinking about the intended meaning based on an understanding of common terminology. RAI was more about ‘abstract’ intentions for rules for fairness, rather than actual interpretations of words. For example, in D&D 5e, the feat “crossbow expert” is often applied to any ranged weapon RAW,  because it doesn’t say “with a crossbow” on that point. However, the name of the feats is ‘crossbow expert’, which implies RAW, the mechanics are built for use with a crossbow, and not all ranged weapons, even though it does not explicitly state “with a crossbow” in the description of the feat. They went on to say that “RAW doesn’t mean only take what’s only explicitly written nor does it mean to try to dissect things as if you’re a college writing professor”.  Other GMs, however, would argue that being pedantic about RAW is the point – that crossbow expert not including crossbow means that ‘as written’ you are free to apply it to any ranged weapon. So, who is correct? How do we read RAW or RAI? Are Rules as Intended actually about abstract intention or anything beyond pedantic literal readings?

It doesn’t fucking matter.

Dealing with absolutes is meaningless. That whole paragraph was a waste! Debating definitions not only takes up a lot of time, but it also takes away from the point of the conversation. People generally don’t want to be corrected on things, even if they’re wrong, and being right starts to become the focus of the conversation instead of solving the problem initially posed. Should we be debating what RAW/RAI means, or should the GM just decide how we’re going to rule the feat in play going forward and tell people that? Does it really matter who has the ‘correct’ definition of ‘roleplay’, or does it matter that you want to find out if you and another player want the same things out of the game? The problems never get solved and people decide that they don’t want to waste time talking about them. 

Solution: Speak in definitions, not terminology.

Language is contextual and situational. Especially English, which I’m writing in now (where homophones and homonyms abound)! By getting rid of terminology altogether, you stop making assumptions about something based on what might not be true for the other person, and start hearing what they mean and want when they hear those terms. Instead of asking someone ‘do you prefer roleplay or combat more?’ ask them ‘how do you use your character sheet in a game? What are the important parts of it for you?’ to get a better idea of where they’re coming from. Generally, when recruiting players for my games, I’ve turned away from those ‘What do you want out of a game?’ or ‘Do you prefer exploration, roleplay, or combat’ sort of political meme chart questions. It is a lot more work for me, but I find that interviewing people one on one once I get their applications and having a conversation about what they’ve enjoyed in games or hearing about their characters tells me far more and is a lot more accurate than me polling them to put their feelings into categories. Not only that, but opening this dialogue up from the beginning allows me to build much better camaraderie with people I hope to be playing with, and sets the stage for future open communication.

I could write a lot about what you do once you have figured out what people want, and we can loop into Bankuei’s point about folks not being able to force anyone to want the same things, but I think that’s best saved for another post altogether (and probably done enough by other GMs who have said it better than I). The point is, however, that using descriptive language instead of terminology is going to save you a lot of time when telling people what you want and them understanding what you want.

—————–

Addendum: All said and done, some people might still want to use terminology. To that end, I am creating a handy dandy dictionary of common tabletop terms and the most common definitions I’ve seen across various communities. You might define these terms differently (see the entire article above, and I welcome feedback or clarification or additional terms)… but perhaps this might be a useful ‘come together’ standardisation point when discussing tabletops in the future (I’ll post the link here eventually and continue adding to it as I go). This is also a fairly incomplete thought, I feel, so I’ll probably write more about it later.