#More abstracted than most blades players would do including me

[nancysammy]

I'd like to offer a different perspective, and extend an invite to examine what assumptions are being brought in by the game, and what assumptions are brought in by its players.

Its likely that this is simply an offhand example from OP's table, but I was a bit surprised reading it, because I think that BitD might be more interested in the nitty gritty of its rules than it's getting credit for.

I think the Blades rules are fantastic, because they're flexible to storytelling and interpretation, they're not *prescriptive* but they are certainly assigned specific stats and mechanics.

With the example of crafted items here - - a crafted item won't have a +1 bonus the way it might in D&D, but all crafted items do have specific mechanical features in addition to their effects. Namely: tier level, number of uses, and sometimes drawbacks.

These follow from a combination of fictional and mechanical elements. The rules ask:

~What kind of effect does this item have, and how big is that effect?

+ This is a fictional element, based on player imagination

~what Quality level must be reached to achieve that effect?

+ This is a mechanical element, based on crew tier and the player roll

~From there, drawbacks and uses might apply

+ These are mechanical elements that are assigned based on established fiction

These rules are so fun to me because of the way that fiction and mechanic blend and work together! An item's tier tells you something pretty specific and non-negotiable, whereas drawbacks have a bit of both mechanic and fiction. The drawback "Conspicuous", for example: is it conspicuously bright, or loud, does it cause a ripple in the ghost field? That's up to the table to decide, but we know for sure that it will cause you to take +1 Heat whenever it is used.

Additionally, there does exist a list of sample creations in the rulebook that are "well known by tinkerers in Duskwall" that can be created without additional research/study. The list isn't prescriptive - - these aren't the ONLY creations that can be made, but a list to work from does exist in the rules as-writ.

(If any Blades players want to take a peek - the rules I'm referencing are pages 224-228 in my copy.)

I think there are games that come in with the assumption that the player will act and be interested in acting as a competent storyteller without much structural help (eg Fiasco). But ironically, I think the lighter a game is mechanically the trickier it becomes to actually play, because it relies on skills that the game won't teach.

And also, on a less related note, I think that quote-unquote "good tabletop storytelling" can be many things. Really "zoomed-in" and tactile stories that are really interested in individual character thoughts, feelings and motivations, and really "zoomed out" and abstracted play like moving pieces on a grid to represent faction interplay. I guess this is where game design might be interested in drawing the line between whether fiction follows mechanics, or whether mechanics follow fiction. Either way though, the mechanics and the fiction should be shaking hands.

Have to say, one of the biggest hurdles in introducing one of my usual gaming groups to a system like Blades in the Dark is the idea that items don't have defined stats and are instead props to twist the fiction in interesting ways. It often feels like I'm using therapy speak on a very literally minded engineer.

Player: Alright, I've spent some downtime crafting, what can I make? Me: What would you like to make : ) ? Player: Like, is there a list? Me: Nope : ) , you're limited by your imagination and what we agree would be best for the story. Player: Well are there suggested guidelines for what an appropriate item would be? What Bonuses It can give me? Me: Items don't really give bonuses : ) , now how about you tell me what emotions finishing this project stirs in your character? Player: What was even the point of this? Also stop saying ": )" I don't know how you're doing that with your mouth.

Honestly it's a fascinating study in what assumptions ttrpgs make about the people playing them: Namely that a prospective BitD player has some personal skill or desire to act as a storyteller, and doesn't put much emphasis on the nitty-gritty of the rules.

[open-hearth-rpg]

Violence Begets: Great RPG Mechanics #RPGMechanics: Week Eight

Several games/systems in the last couple of decades have included currencies for the gamemaster, often in combination with a parallel currency for the GM. Fate Points from Fate, Darkness from Coriolis, Threat (by various names) in the 2d20 systems. They’re often used to trigger events, activate foe abilities, and increase the danger of adversaries. It’s an interesting and dynamic approach– though it's often one I forget as a GM. 

Sometimes that’s because we’re moving quickly and stopping off to track that or to interrupt the flow of a moment doesn’t feel right. In other cases, spending that currency to make things more challenging for the players feels a little arbitrary. I forget that this is something that’s built into the mechanics. But the abstraction of it can make me reluctant to do those kinds of spends. 

So it’s a little but significant thing when the game ties those elements into player actions. For example in Coriolis, the GM’s currency generates when the players spend their own currency. In the various 2d20 games, if a PC lacks Momentum to boost themselves, they can give the GM Threat instead– short term reward for long term risk. 

But there’s a particular variation in one 2d20 game worth examining. In Star Trek Adventures the mechanics offer another way to generate Threat. When the players ask for heavier weaponry for a mission, like a Phaser Rifle, the GM gains it. When players opt to set phasers to kill in a combat, the likewise give a point to the GM. It’s built into several published adventurers. For example in "Hard Rock Catastrophe," the PCs in orbit have to deal with colossal monsters on the surface. If they choose more aggressive methods (firing phasers to blind them or tractor beaming them to redirect them), these generate additional threat whether they succeed or not. 

In the case of STA this idea supports the genre and I love it. Starfleet’s about creative problem solving and exhausting options before moving to violence. Going in fully armed raises the stakes of a situation and increases the tension. I love that cost/benefit reinforcement. Additionally it feels right for me as a GM: I know what generated the Threat, rather than it just being an abstract energy of bad luck I have. 

You could adapt this to other games where the players’ goal is to defuse tension, keep the peace, or avoid getting themselves into trouble. The most obvious non-currency approach would be a clock. I can imagine this in a Blades in the Dark campaign– you already often have relationship clocks with different factions. In some ways this parallels the mechanic of Chaos from Dishonored, a strong influence on the Blades setting. 

I can also imagine it as a campaign tracker– with break points for effects. There’s some of that kind of thing in Girl by Moonlight. Each setting has tracks showing how things are progressing. I especially like it as a campaign-wide clock. It could be the spine of a Mountain Home game, perhaps with a looming threat for an arc of the campaign. I could imagine a Masks campaign where you’re tracking the time until a resentful adult superteam decides to intervene. 

Ideally a track like this should be visible to the players, though maybe exactly what happens at the break points might not be. The track should go up when the players make active choices and do things. It’s a little less interesting if it rises when they don’t do things. You can have some of that passive rise, but imho it’s better to go active. If you do have it rising passively, there should be some mechanic for the PCs to reduce the clock.

[the-river-person]

Secrets of the Deltarune

Okay so I was taking a closer look at the Deltarune and I started to notice some really weird things. It’s a symbol for the Kingdom of Monsters, right? Wrong. Gerson tells us “That's the Delta Rune, the emblem of our kingdom.The Kingdom...Of Monsters.” Okay so its the same thing, right? Nope. I looked up emblem and its distinction from Symbol. A Symbol represents an idea, a process, or a physical entity. While an Emblem is often an abstract that represents a concept like a moral truth or an allegory. And when it is used for a person, it is usually a King, a saint, or even a deity. An emblem crystallizes in concrete, visual terms some abstraction: a deity, a tribe or nation, or a virtue or vice and can be worn as an identifier if worn as say a patch or on clothing or armor or carried on a flag or banner or shield. So what does it matter? Well Gerson even tells us why. “That emblem actually predates written history.The original meaning has been lost to time...“  Hold up. Predates written history? The beginning of written history is approximately 5500 years ago. Somewhere around 3400 B.C.E. Thats a long time. And the prophecy that goes with the symbol talks about the Underground going empty, so it can only really be as old as The War Between Humans and Monsters. But...when was that? The game doesn’t tell us the exact dates. Well we have a couple clues. At the beginning of the game we have a little cut-scene of the war and then a bit where we see a human going up the mountain only to fall down into the Underground. Most players assume that this is you, beginning your adventure. Except its not. Later in the game, when you SAVE Asriel in the True Pacifist Route, we’re shown another cutscene with the exact same human figure in EXACTLY the same position, being helped by a very  young Asriel and the silhouette of Toriel. It’s Chara, not Frisk. So our date of 201X (2010-2019) takes place long before Frisk even arrives. We don’t know how long before. That really doesn’t help with when they were first thrown down there though. So I took a look at the images before that, of the war. The first image shows a human who is very different from the later pictures. Both the make of the spear and the animal hide-like clothing suggest that it’s probably stone age. The text tells us a very general “Long Ago”when describing how both races ruled the earth together. In the next two images we’re shown the actual war. The crowd of humans have various things like torches and spears. Those diamond type spears are very similar to Roman Pilums. The Human figure with a sword was interesting though. He bore a mantle (cape or cloak) and is sporting a sword. Though there’s not much detail, we can still identify the general time period of the sword. The size isn’t big enough for a proper claymore or longsword, or even a hand and half sword. Since our figure appears to be moving forward, and we can guess that it’s not in a friendly manner given the context, yet still holding the sword in one hand instead of two, it’s probably a one handed broadsword. It also has a cruciform hilt (cross-shaped) that is slightly curved. The blade is quite wide with what appears to be straight edges (based on two images with limited detail). And it has a very narrow Ricasso, an unsharpened length of blade just above the guard or handle. Ricassos were used all throughout history, but they’re pretty notable for the Early Medieval Period in Europe. And the rest of the sword (blade type, length, crossguard, and method of use) is very reminiscent of a Medieval Knightly Arming Sword, the prominent type of sword in that period from the 10th to 13th centuries. So I had to take a closer look at my spears. Turns out, they actually more closely resemble a medieval cavalry lance or javelin. And many Javelins have their root in the style of the Roman Pilums, including the sometimes diamond shaped tips. The sword and mantle of the figure suggest heavily he’s a knight, and backed up by the spear carriers we can guess that its the Early Medieval Period, possibly the beginning of the Romanesque Period. So that would place us all roughly a thousand and at least ten years before Chara fell into the Underground in 201X. Asgore was certainly alive back then. In the Genocide Route Gerson says “Long ago, ASGORE and I agreed that escaping would be pointless...Since once we left, humans would just kill us.“ and in the Post-Pacifist when you go back to talk to everyone he’ll say this when talking about Undyne “I used to be a hero myself, back in the old days. Gerson, the Hammer of Justice.” He even talks about how Undyne would follow him around when he was beating up bad guys, and try to help, by enthusiastically attacking people at random such as the mailman. This tells us that Gerson and Asgore are as old as the original war and both had been part of the battle. And both lived long enough to survive till now. Gerson is quite old looking, while Asgore is not. He explains this by saying that Boss Monsters don’t age unless they have children and then they age as their children grow, otherwise they’ll be the same age forever. But Undyne doesn’t appear to be old. And I started to wonder how long normal monsters lived in comparison to Boss Monsters. A long time for sure. From the Undertale 5th Anniversary Alarm Clock Dialogue we can learn that Asgore once knew a character called Rudy (who also appears in the Deltarune Game), who he met at Hotland University and appeared to be generally the same age as Asgore. Since it takes place in Hotland we know that it was already when they were underground, Asgore was King and was already doing his Santa Clause thing, and that Asgore was trying to find ways to occupy his time aside from actually Ruling. In the dialogue he tells us that Rudy began to look older than him. “I was there for it all. His Youth, his Marriage, his Fatherhood. Then, suddenly, one day... he fell down. ... Rudy... I... was never able to show you the sun.” Monsters can live a long time. But Boss Monsters, as long as they don’t have a child, can live nearly forever as long as they aren’t killed. Based on that, Undyne is probably quite young and Gerson is incredibly old even for a Monster, and yet only recently he’s stopped charging around fighting bad guys. Since Undyne was with him, those bad guys were in the Underground, and his distinction of her attacking not so bad folk like the mailman, means that he was probably in an official capacity to fight crime, such as a guardsman, or maybe captain of the royal guard. So. Even though there’s plenty of time for a prophecy to spring up naturally. We have a number of Monsters who have actually lived that long that would be more than happy to correct mistakes and assumptions. Gerson is quite elderly and is a tad forgetful, but he still knows much. Characters such as Toriel and Asgore are still hale and hearty, and both had witnessed so much. Though we know very little about the character, Elder Puzzler is also implied to be quite aged and knows a great deal about the “Puzzling Roots” of Monster History. You’re probably wondering what all of this is leading to. Well with these characters in place to maintain knowledge of history in the populace, then we have an Underground which created a prophecy AFTER it was trapped there, which leads me to conclude that when the prophecy was created, it must have been referencing something older than the War of Monsters and Humans.

“The original meaning has been lost to time... All we know is that the triangles symbolize us monsters below, and the winged circle above symbolizes... Somethin' else. Most people say it's the 'angel,' from the prophecy...” ‘Angel’. This is when we hear about the angel. We see the Deltarune on Toriel’s clothing and on the Ruins door. As well as behind Gerson himself. The thing he mentions clearly has wings of some kind. Surrounding a ball (note to self: Look into possible connection between mythical ball artifact from the piano room and the Deltarune Emblem). It looks a little like the fairy from the Zelda series. Those “triangles” are the greek letter Delta. That letter has a lot of connections and meanings to it. A river delta is shaped like the letter which is how it got its name. There are a number of maths and science connections. But the two connections you’d be interested in are that a Delta chord is another name for a Major Seventh Chord in music. The soundtrack of Undertale uses these chords to do fantastic things with the tone and aesthetic of its leitmotifs, changing them from a happy or hopeful tune, to a dark and despairing one without actually changing the melody. And in a subfield of Set Theory, a branch of mathematics and philosophical logic, it is used to calculate and examines the conditions under which one or the other player of a game has a winning strategy, and the consequences of the existence of such strategies. The games studied in set theory are usually Gale–Stewart games—two-player games of perfect information (each player, when making any decision, is perfectly informed of all the events that have previously occurred, including the "initialization event" of the game (e.g. the starting hands of each player in a card game)) in which the players make an infinite sequence of moves and there are no draws. But why is one of them turned upside down? I started looking things up again. Turns out there is such a symbol. The Nabla symbol is the Greek Letter Delta only inverted so that it appears upside down. Its name comes from the Phoenician harp shape, though its also called the “Del”. A musical connection is exactly what Toby would do. But its main use is in mathematics, where it is a mathematical notation to represent three different operators which make equations infinitely easier to write. These equations are all concerned with what is called Physical Mathematics. That is... Mathematics that calculate and have to do with measuring the physical world. Why is that relevant? Well the difference between humans and monsters is that humans have physical bodies while monsters are made primarily of magic. Well I also discovered that the Delta symbol for the ancient Greeks was sometimes used to as an abbreviation for the word  δύση , which meant the West in the compass points. West, westerly, sunset, twilight, nightfall, dusk, darkness, decline, end of a day. All this symbolism for a couple of triangles. There’s entire books devoted to them. And he calls the whole symbol, deltas and angel alike, the Delta RUNE. Whats a rune? Well a rune is a letter, but specifically a letter from the writing of one of the Germanic Languages before the adoption of the Latin alphabet. Interestingly... the Greek Letter Delta does NOT qualify as a Rune. In any stretch of the word. I searched for hours. What I DID find was the etymological origins of the word Rune. It comes from a Proto-Germanic word “rūnō“ which means something along the lines of “whisper, mystery, secret,  secret conversation, letter”. Interesting. So since its paired up with the Delta... it could be taken to mean “The Secret of the Delta” or “The Delta’s Secret”. If we make a few assumptions we might even get something like “The Secret of the West” or “The Mystery of the Twilight” or numerous other variations that have different connotations. It’s conjecture, certainly, and possibly a few stretches. But it is certainly there to think about. My thoughts centered around the positioning of the letters. The idea that the one facing up represented Humanity, and the two ordinary Deltas were Monsters. With the Angel above them all. Or rather, SOMETHING above them all. We have no proof that the idea of an Angel existed before the Underground’s prophecy. I like to think it did because usually that sort of thing draws on previously existing beliefs and ideas. For all we know the symbol could represent an abstract idea that governed both monsters and humans. Like “Kill or be killed” or “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” or other basic idiomatic ideologies of that sort. Other than the realization that the Deltarune is older than the prophecy and the Underground, I didn’t have a concrete idea of what the Emblem actually means. Just a lot of theories and connective ideas. But there’s certainly a lot to be found. I don’t really know how much thought Toby actually put into this, but he’s quite well known for secrets within secrets. So its possible he knew all this going in. If he’s anything like me, and I am notorious for writing this sort of twisting references within references within references into my stories, then he’s probably at least aware of an existing connection. Its quite probably that the Deltarune is exactly what Gerson tells us. An emblematic set of symbols that is used to represent the continuing Kingdom of Monsters and has been since before written history. But as he says... its so old that it might have had a different meaning originally, whatever idea the Monsters wanted to remember, wanted to uphold enough to use it for their royal family and their kingdom, a reminder. Of something, or someone.

[bonetrader]

Unusual RPG combinations

I like to tinker with mixing and matching rpg settings and systems. I will try to collect the ones I'm most fascinated with. I haven't found the opportunity to actually try any of these combinations, but I guess it doesn't hurt to put them out there in case someone finds any of them interesting.

Shadowrun redux

Setting: Shadowrun

System: Blades in the Dark

I adore Shadowrun. It takes all the bleakness of reality, amplifies it, but also mixes it with a lot of magic and wonder. And if you read the books selectively, even with hope.

But playing it can get convoluted, especially if your group is prone to overplan. And we know that plans always go sideways. There's no such thing as a milk run. Spending an hour on planning can be annoying in itself. But it's extra painful if it has to be thrown out the window in the first five minutes of execution.

Enter Blades in the Dark that instead of planning ahead encourages to use flashbacks on the spot to reveal how you prepared in advance to get past an obstacle. That makes pulling off daring heists a lot more easier for the players. Infiltration is way less stressful on the player if they can make up any forged backstory on the go, and do a flashback to make sure it's believable. There's still some minimal planning, but it's practically just setting the starting scene of the run. You don't have to specify anything beyond that.

The concept of crew from Blades also fits nicely with Shadowrun. It can tell the GM what kind of runs the players prefer, and gives the players the ability tospecialize their team. Blades was created for a different level of technology and magic. But it mainly focuses on the hierarchy of the criminal underground, and that translates easily even to a modern world. So I expect the same crews to work with Shadowrun, but more thematic options could be added to tie it closer to the sixth world.

The concept of hunting grounds should be reconsidered. In Blades it means a specific neighbourhood the characters are more familiar with and usually target. In Shadowrun it makes more sense to make it a specific scenery they usually operate in. For example it could be a specific megacorporation they often go up against, or a type of gang that's common in the sprawls they operate in.

Blades also offers a nice subsystem for handling reputation, growth, notoriety, and even stress and trauma between runs. Incorporating a specific vice for each PC also seems completely in line with Shadowrun's concept.

The biggest difference will be in character creation. Blades' system is more abstract than Shadowrun's. In Blades you have to pick a specific playbook for your character. I think that's OK. While Shadowrun allowed building characters skill by skill, it always encouraged working toward specific archetypes like face, rigger, or adept. Your playbook determines your starting stats, but you can still somewhat specialize it. Blades also allows crossing from a playbook to a new one, but that's long term character advancement.

Adding some elements of Shadowrun might not be trivial. Spirits could be more or less handled as the ghosts in Blades. But magic and technology would have to be specifically addressed. Some of it could be treated like fluff, making it mechanically irrelevant whether your efforts are more effective because of training, because of an implant, or because you are infusing them with magic. But at least mages, riggers and deckers would probably need their own playbooks.

Twisted Houses of the Drow

Setting: any fantasy setting with drows, but I have a specific campaign idea for Spelljammer

System: Houses of the Blooded

This is a re-skin of Houses of the Blooded. The ven and the drow have different values and cultures, but I think they share a similar style. Decadence and intrigue runs deep in their societies. I'd replace the virtues (attributes) of the original game with corresponding vices. And each vice would be linked to a drow god instead of the totem animals of the original game.

Instead of the romance mechanic there would be rivalry. It would work the same way, just with a different flavour. Drows could pick someone as a rival, driving each other to greater feats. Instead of creating art drows could develop schemes. Same as the art mechanic. The scheme could give a bonus to those it was shared with. Seasons, regions, holdings, and blessings would have to be reworked, but I think renaming them would be enough in most cases.

My campaign idea is for a group of drow renegades employed by the elven admiralty as covert agents. They would be sent for long term infiltration missions to places where surface elves are not welcome. Each of them would have an affiliation with a drow god as well, and each would have their own hidden agenda. It might even work if not all characters are drows. I could imagine one or two elf, half-elf, or shapeshifter mixed in.

If I ever got to it seasons of the campaign would include: Building up a career of piracy in space (remember, Spelljammer) to get on the good side of a notorious and elusive pirate king, and lead the elven navy to its hideout. Instead of holdings the players could manage trade routes they raid, and their ships. Another would be infiltrating a drow city to stop an invasion. I think this would be the closest to the original Houses game. And finally I'd drop them in a mission to arrive as inmates to Elfcatraz, the secret prison of the admiralty (named by one of my players) to find out who's really in control there.

Around Cerilia in 80 days

Setting: Birthright

System: Primetime adventures

This one is kind of cheating, because Primetime adventures is quite setting-independent. So I rather mean it's a better fit for the kind of stories I'd like to run in this setting.

Birthright's setting works on a comprehensible scale for me. Most fantasy worlds have gigantic continents with dozens of large countries. They are too large for me, and I end up with a vast countryside where everything's the same for weeks to go. But Birthright has a small continent, maybe more like a large island with five distinct cultural regions. And each of those regions have a dozen provinces, each province described with its own flavor. It's not complicated, but colorful.

I guess it was done this way to accomodate the strategy aspect of Birthright that was one of its main features. While the concept of ruling provinces sounds great, the setting really makes me want to have a game about just travelling through this world. Not with adventurers, but rather with tourists, merchants, travelers who are going there to see a foreign place, or do business with the locals, and not just to explore a dungeon that happens to be there.

Ever since I saw the Roman Mysteries TV series I've been particularly fascinated with the idea of having a bunch of kids as player characters who are brought along by one's aunt/uncle on business trips to foreign lands, and get into trouble there. For example a trip from a frontier barony to the capital city, traveling through the woods of wary elves, then sailing down the river, stopping in a few more interesting port. Or a journey to the magnificent kingdoms in the east, although there are many perils both natural, and man-made on the way.

Thinking in Primetime adventures terms each province or city could be a separate episode. And the peculiarities of the place could be used to decide which character's spotlight episode should happen there.

Even domains of awnshegh (people and animals infected by the power of a dead god of darkness, becoming "monsters") don't have to be off limits. Some of them were quite sociable, and even more ruled over people whose perspective could be interesting.

Crown of Wings

Setting: Council of Wyrms

System: Birthright's domain management

Council of Wyrms focuses on playing dragons from various clans who work together. Despite the central role of the council, and the politics between the dragon clans, Council of Wyrms didn't touch much on the actual politics and realm management. It was the same AD&D, just scaled up to dragon PCs.

But I think there's so much more potential in the setting. I could easily imagine dragons ruling the land, managing guilds, and churches, and building out ley line networks to cast spells affecting whole realms. So everything that Birthright's system offered.

The setting isn't fully fleshed out, but it lets us fill in the land with fantastic locations. Some cities and towns were mentioned at unusual places, full of various races. So players could run wild with ideas when they create their own domain. Should their be trade routes with a merfolk city, and underwater ley lines? Absolutely. Could there be a church based on promoting the halfling lifestyle? Why not?

And then there's the Council. Domain Power could determine the character's status in it. Regency Points, and Gold Bars could be used as bargaining chips.

But what should be its purpose? I have seen enough of the trope of warring factions who have to be unified against some common threat, maybe with a traitorous faction thrown in the mix. I mean it makes for a fine story, but I'm getting a little tired of it. This time I'd rather see a council as a way to trade, to exchange ideas, and to help everybody improve their own clan. It doesn't make for a strong narrative, but I think it's a more positive message overall.

I think the biggest restriction in the setting is that dragon clans are too homogenic. Like, each clan consists of just one kind of dragon. That doesn't help in putting together a game with diverse characters. The original game concept solved that by making the PCs agents of the Council who may come from various clans.

For a more political game we could introduce mixed clans. So the characters could be part of the same clan, while still coming from various places. Maybe they are outcasts or survivors who created their own clan. Or maybe their clan was open minded, and was located in a central place, so it naturally lead to it becoming more diverse.

Or we could say that they are from different clans, but their clans are neighbours and allies of each other. At least if you're like me, and you don't want to set the players up for PvP by putting them to opposing sides of a clan feud.

Custom Quest

Setting: Your long-running campaign

System: Fiasco

I think any campaign that went on for a while should be an easy source for creating a Fiasco playset for a one-time play. Fiasco is about nobodies trying to pull off something bigger than they are. It's about petty people, and half-baked ideas going wrong. And while that might still sound like your average adventurer party, here we know they can't win. They will be lucky if they don't end up in a lot worse situation they started in.

For convenience I will refer to the PCs of the original campaign as heroes. It's okay if they are not actual heroes. That happens pretty often. But they had the greatest influence on the campaign this one shot is based on, so we have to heavily rely on them.

So the player characters in this one-shot are probably just background noise in the original campaign. I think this is a great way to explore how the actions of the heroes might affect the common people in unexpected ways. Objects driving the character dynamics could be things the heroes brought back, created, or just used in a memorable moment. Maybe an artifact they sold off is making its rounds on the blackmarket, and someone sees an opportunity in it. Or evidence surfaced that could incriminate one of the heroes.

And it's not just Objects. Their shenanigans might have brought the unwanted attention of a powerful cult to the city. Or the local barkeep loathes the heroes because they trashed his place one too many times. And he's just looking for some idiots to exact his revenge. Really, just look for whomever the heroes might have ever slighted or aided to get a plethora of petty plots and strange driving forces in the community. This can give you the Needs and Relationships between the player characters.

Locations could be places well known by the players, preferably close to a place the heroes frequent. The heroes, and the more memorable NPCs could give some enjoyable cameos. And finally they could become part of the Tilt table to turn a bad situation worse in the middle of the game.

[swipestream]

Gnome Stew Notables – Jabari Weathers

About Jabari in their own words: Jabari Weathers is an illustrator and game designer who currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland. They also are (apparently) under suspicion of being a goblin princet from beyond the veil. In order to keep up their glamor, they make art and narrative games for themselves.

You can help them maintain their human facade by checking out their artwork at jmwillustration.com and their game design work at lunarveil.press. If you wish to follow along with their more anecdotal adventures, they can be found on instagram (jmwillustration) and twitter (JabariWeathers).

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your work? What project are you most proud of?

Hi Tracy, thanks for inviting me to do this with you! I’m a black, nonbinary scifi fantasy illustrator by day, and tabletop rpg/narrative game designer by night. I live in Baltimore and attended art school here (at MICA). Soon after I found myself making so many tarot cards for roleplaying game publishers. The work I’m most proud of in that regard is, in fact, split between making the 7th Sea Sortè deck art, and the Bluebeard’s Bride Tarot of Servants art. Both projects put together took 8 months for me to make the art for, which kind of scares me. As far as my game design work, I’m working on an epistolary game called A Dire Situation, which is essentially a really perverse game of telephone inspired by Dangerous Liaisons and other acidic period piece dramas. It’s a good time. You can follow my artwork at jmwillustration.com, my (announced) game design work at lunarveil.press, and me at twitter.com/JabariWeathers and instagram.com/jmwillustration~

What themes do you like to emphasize in game work?

Existential tension, often the questions of identity and knowing who you are. I’m in a few different professional and creative circles that I simultaneously feel indebted to as far as my taste in media and interests, and feel not immediately welcome in, having to have carved a niche for myself within scifi/fantasy illustration and game design. I often try to find ways to take the kind of performative tension I feel as a POC in both circles and fold that into game design terms. It’s sort of like journaling. There’s a mechanic in A Dire Situation where everyone chooses a secret for another person’s character, but you don’t know what secret has been chosen for you specifically, even though your *character* is understood to be aware of the secret and you as a player get to see all of the available secrets that are in play at the table. The result is nobody is quite who they themselves think they are, and you end up having to question a lot about the entity you’re stepping into for the evening. I like trying to get people to question their fictional personas, anyway!

How did you get into games? Who did you try to emulate in your career?

Actually I got into games through my mom, who played DnD when she was younger and never stopped consuming speculative fiction. She kinda just passed the genre interest on to me. I also grew up with cousins who played a LOT of video games with me, and eventually made my way toward titles that valued a kind of emergent design that tabletop RPGs are especially well suited for (for example, Thief, Deus Ex [I grew up with Invisible War and Deadly Shadows and played the earlier games in late high school and early college], Morrowind). In high school, my religion teacher (I went to an all boys Catholic high school), was really my first longstanding GM with 3.5, but I had been reading the books for a solid amount of time before that point. I don’t know if I tried to emulate any one person in my game design upon starting, but I did try to chase the same kind of player choice that Looking Glass Studios baked into their digital work (which they pulled from tabletop games in a lot of ways), as well as their interdisciplinary approach to game design. Look at Thief: The Dark Project against it’s contemporaries and you can tell that it was made by people interested in things outside of the industry that it was making an impact on. I love how Looking glass trusts it’s players and doesn’t hold their hand, instead giving them tools to let the experience emerge. I also love how their games had such odd and idiosyncratic approaches that really challenged the player. I still chase both things in the social landscape that tabletop RPGs create, and I really hope I make something that’s half as inspiring as that Looking Glass ethos was for me!

More recently, I’ve been owing a lot of the recent game design lessons learned to Marissa Kelly, Sarah Richardson and Whitney Beltran from Bluebeard’s Bride, and John Harper’s work on Blades in the Dark. The former is such an amazing study in how to get horror and tension to emerge, and how to bake unusual ceremony into a game. A lot of people are intimidated by it when they are used to simulationist style games, and many admirers of Bluebeard’s Bride also label it as “simple” mechanically, but there is *so* much happening in the social and emotional landscape of that game, so much that gets mechanized so eloquently. Every piece of vocabulary that the players (including the Groundskeeper) use is calibrated perfectly to the theme and discussions Bluebeard’s is meant to provoke. Blades does a wondrous amount of things with a swashbuckling setup by letting players pick the details of their abilities and tools on the fly, but making *everything* a resource management game. When some of those resources aren’t just ‘coin’ or ‘inventory’ but are ‘stress’, it becomes evocative in a game that I wish a lot of other action/adventure RPGs would be. Both also have a remarkable relationship to violence that ends up more nuanced than what I think the common examples of games present show to those not entrenched in the game community. I’ve been studying these both *very* closely, and trying to digest the things they’ve brought to my game brain rather deeply.

Do you have any advice for others getting into the industry?

Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there, and do so in person! I try to go to events because I meet people and make fast friends when in the flesh, and those are friendships I really cherish and feel enriched by. Also, don’t underestimate how much you as (not a designer) are valuable to game design! A lot of my best game design ideas come from me essentially abstracting the anxieties of my day to day life doing freelance and being worried about the world into game mechanics and procedures, or finding the particular joys of the media I consume and turning that into a game. A Dire Situation started as an attempt to capture the unique feeling of watching people read things they shouldn’t have access to, which I always enjoy seeing in films. Get weird with your ideas, someone will cherish it and you’ll get to know yourself better through that, and don’t be afraid to share yourself before you’re ‘polished enough’. This industry is so young, and I think a lot of people curtail the considerable wisdom they can bring to it because they aren’t established, but that’s the way that communities grow best, when people exert the best of themselves in the truest way they know.

What do you think the most important things in gaming are right now?

That’s a huge question, and I’m afraid of my answer being too succinct to pin down a lot of the things that I think are valuable and important that are shifting in this medium and the community that fosters it. Right now, there’s a generation of designers and gamers that are pushing to be *way* more inclusive in this medium, which is amazing because it’s such an empathy builder. With that, we’re seeing a lot of games that are reflecting that wider spectrum of experiences and needs at a higher frequency, and seeing that it’s getting good and wide reception. Games like Bluebeard’s Bride, Star Crossed, Mutants in the Night, and BFF:Best Friends Forever are challenging questions of who’s stories are told, who’s perspectives are shared and what kind of exchange do we expect from such a social medium. As things move forward, I think that kind of willingness and encouragement to lean into new experiences without apologizing to established patterns of play and design is going to only help this community grow faster and stronger, even with the anticipated challenges. This medium is showing very explicitly that Joy isn’t just killing goblins, and Pain isn’t just the threat of being killed by goblins, and that kind of emotional honesty is pulling the industry into it’s teenage years.

This also comes with a greater call for accountability in our community as far as social safety. There’s a lot more discussion of missing stairs, safe tables, and supportive gatherings than I felt just a decade ago as a teenager. A lot of conduct has been pulled rather painfully into the light, a lot of social patterns are under intense scrutiny at our tables and in this industry, and I think that’s rightly so. Being in this world, much as I love it, can be so quietly, exhaustively bracing, and the people that make up this industry should feel able to assert what makes them feel safe and when they are threatened. People are actively doing this in games and in the community, and that’s amazing.

What’s your most meaningful gaming experience?

Generally, one that has enough trust to get uncomfortable. One where I can lean into the vulnerabilities of characters, and embolden fellow players to do the same. I look for kind of emotionally intense, bracing media, and I love feeling that way (or provoking that feeling) in a game. I want my assumptions shaken up a little bit, and, assuming it’s navigated compassionately and safely, I value going to dark places in games. It pulls a lot of the horror and strife of my actual world into perspective. I generally like my fantasy to reflect my reality and give me the vocabulary and process to make it better, or at least see it more clearly. There’s nothing wrong with lighter fare, but this is what will get my attention reliably.

What’s the most important change you could see occurring in the industry?

More than a few, but paying freelancers livable wages (even if it means shrinking the density of content) is the big one. There’s tons of ways to unpack this, and tons of reasons that workloads are overweighed and underpaid, many being unintentional for the majority of the market. In some ways, that’s made it even harder to check. The flipside is that I’ve had ADs in the industry say things along the lines of “artists take (RPG work) on as a hobby, nobody is doing this for full time work” and that sentiment really blew my mind. So many really talented artists spending so much time, money and effort perfecting craft and that’s a sentiment that’s we might be competing against when trying to navigate to a workable and healthy architecture of work. I think there’s a lot of wanting to do better on the business end, especially in indie RPGs, but the whole industry needs to (and is trying to) go through that learning process. The continued challenge to stick with those better principles I think is an instrumental change to the community’s sustainability.

Anything else you want to add?

When practicing magic, make sure to add salt!

And thank you for your time, Tracy!

  Gnome Stew Notables – Jabari Weathers published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames