Category: RPG

I’ve been asked “How do you win” an RPG a number of times. This is closely adjacent to “Why play an RPG”, A question I’ve thought a lot about. I’m stealing from the book Finite and Infinite games for this description.

How do you win?
An RPG can be played in two different ways.

You can play a finite game with one win condition in mind. A way to reach the end of a story and everything hinges on that goal. It is some condition agreed to by everyone at the table but often suggested by the GM.

Or you can play an indefinite game, where much like life, there are many finite games along the way. Here, you win as long as there’s more ground that the players want to explore.

There is a big difference in tone in each option. Finite games are powerful, focused and serious. They are played within boundaries, time matters, they are played to be won. It’s not fair for the goalposts to move in a finite game. Players should not be surprised in that way. The conditions of play are controlled.

Indefinate games are dramatic, playful, exploratory, they’re about curiosity. The game’s boundaries will shift and even break, the reason to play is to be surprised by the results of play.

In Robert McKee’s book – STORY he says “True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure – the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature”

He’s talking about character arcs, but the thing that struck me about the quote is this is exactly why I love to GM. Only I’m not so much interested in the character arcs, I’m more interested in learning how the player will guide the character. It’s almost like a laboratory to find the essential core of the players.

That’s why I think I’m less interested in constructing a “Story” and more interested in how the player interprets their character. A good story helps to do that, but arriving at the story isn’t my end goal. It’s to know that essential element of the player’s personality, to see who they are inside, revealed by that pressure.

It’s really only then I feel like I know someone. So while I like exploring fantastic worlds and finding out how they work, those fantastic worlds allow me to explore the people I’m playing with in ways I can’t in everyday life.

In setting and adventure design, include one minimally counter intuitive element in a scene. This will produce a feeling that the world the characters are in is not their mundane world and there are things to discover.

An application of movie making to RPGs

In the early days of film, there was an argument about the proper way to make a movie. There were film makers that subscribed to Realism, the idea that film should be as close to a person standing where the camera is placed. There would be as few cuts in a scene as possible and the camera should remain at eye level. This was to emphasize the content or substance of the film.

Then there were film makers that subscribed to a new way of making film called Formalism. This kind of film goes for dramatic cuts, scene transitions, mood lighting and dramatic camera angles. Formalistic movies convey feeling through style.
Almost all film is somewhere in the middle of this substance vs style dimension.

Directors are mostly who determines where on the continuum a movie ends up.

A google search on Realism and Formalism will provide more information on what this means for a movie. The big take away to emphasize is that both of these qualities serve a purpose. A movie that goes in one direction too far is not going to appeal to a mass audience. Masterworks of film have been produced on both ends of the spectrum but a hit is most frequently in the middle.

This window into style vs substance is illuminating for RPGs also, although where one game falls is not determined by a director. Realism vs Formalism in games are usually built into a game’s mechanics, although the style of a Game Master can also influence how the game is experienced.

How could Realism and Formalism inform the design and the play of a game? Realism consists of elements that are easily called to mind, elements that readily form a mental image. Formalism consists of guiding structures that are felt more than clearly imagined.

No game could entirely follow Realism and it would be difficult to imagine playing a game that was entirely Formalism. All games have both qualities, it’s only the balance of these qualities that defines where the game lands on this spectrum.

Formalism in game design is most easily exemplified by Aspects in FATE. They are a stylistic mechanism that is very difficult to concretely define. They produce a style or feeling to play.

A traditional Formalism that is almost never treated as such is Hit Points. As they were originally intended, Hit Points were intended to represent a vital force that is worn down as a character dodged attacks. In most play they are treated as a representation of physical tissue damage a character can endure. The formalism is often too much for players to adopt and a more concrete image of physical punishment is adopted. It goes from something nebulous to a solid image of wounds inflicted. Even if it is not realistic, it has become a Realism.

Narrative control as a concept is also a Formalism. It is a largely undefined concept that gets frequently cited as a control mechanism. The idea of narrative control says who gets to talk next. While the concept seems straightforward, there are often caveats to a player having complete freedom which can make it difficult to understand what’s allowed and what isn’t.

Another Formalism is genre emulation. This is a popular Formalism to design toward because its a pattern that the designer hopes the player will recognize. However genre is not fixed. In most instances, a ground breaking piece of fiction violates genre norms. Strictly emulating genre prevents the very fact that some of the best genre pieces break the genre.

Realism is not exactly what it might seem at first. For a game to have Realism, it could be forgiven if the designer thought they were supposed to make the game play model reality. Often when a player cites realism, they actually mean a thing that is concrete, something easily imagined.

The primary example of this is the character sheet. Even thought there are no stats that define the whole of a person in life, a stat that defines the capability of a character seem abundantly real to the player. They are discrete and measurable, contradicting them would violate the player’s understanding of the game.

Similarly, even though it would be realistic for a character to lose things that they theoretically are carrying on them, it would strongly violate many player’s conception of the game to say that something written on the character sheet has gone missing. The written word on the page is easily referenced and seems incontrovertible to the player. It is more real than anything else.

Props, maps and the printed page are often considered the most real. It’s easy to point to them and reinforce “facts” that the player perceives with their own senses. The Availability Heuristic says that things that are readily available seem more real to us. This is the core concept of Realism as it is being referred to.

So Realism is in fact elements that are easily called to mind or easily demonstrated. Hit Points mentioned above exemplify something that was meant as a formalism but reducing their interpretation to physical trauma grounds them in a easily called to mind concept. A successful strike with a sword means the weapon literally impacts the character and compromises their body. Nevermind that it wasn’t meant that way as exemplified by the fact that Hit Points in D&D are restored after a long rest.

This might seem to point away from simulation as being a valid goal but that would miss the fact that simulation is easily understood. It’s repeatable and lines up with real life experiences making it easily relatable. A player’s real life experience swinging sticks at each other, pretending they’re swords, informs their expectations of how a sword fight might be experienced in fiction. Simulating those experiences makes it easy for the imagery of the narrative to spring up in the player’s mind.

Realism and Formalism have their own roles to play in every game. There are many more examples of each that can be explored and there are games that have took Formalisms and developed them into more concrete and relatable concepts making them feel more realistic. Examples of this are Archipelago’s ritual phrases and Microscope’s 3×5 cards.

This bifurcation is most easily described as style vs substance. It isn’t the only measure of a game and this isn’t intended to explain everything in RPGs but it’s a tool that describes two concepts that tie together and shape a game experience. Some players prefer a Realism based experience while others revel in Formalism. These qualities deliver different experiences that speak strongly to some but not to others. To say that one or the other is superior to the other is foolish and willfully ignores the fact that all games have some of both but more that our enjoyment of them are subjective.

I gave up on Protector. The Energy System’s version of a supers game. The unfortunate thing is that it was too difficult to create art and support all the different ages the game was supposed to go through.

I do still like the way it handles powers, so I’m releasing Protector, warts and all to the public.

This is the first game under the Energy system to use a simplified dice mechanic. There are now suggestions for how to describe a depleted die using the acronym RISKED and healing is faster now because each rest phase gives depleted dice back automatically in addition to the result of rolls.

Get the file here. Protector RPG

We’ve been working on a streamlining of the Energy System that’s used in Jump Temp and Skree and Thrum. Currently the players all roll from their dice pool and add up all the dice. Unfortunately that’s a little math intensive. Not that people can’t do it, just that it could become tiring.

Our current thought is you pick your highest roll and all the other dice rolled add a +1.

But when we were play testing we talked about an optional possibility that a player could bring in the full value of more dice but at a cost. At first we talked about depleting that die but it didn’t feel right. It also nearly killed both characters each time that happened due to an escalation where both kept depleting dice to be ahead of the other character.

I recently had a different thought though that sounds cool to me but I don’t know how to implement yet. Instead of depleting a die when bringing in more dice, the player is “raising the stakes.” Basically putting themselves in a worse and worse position to achieve a goal.

I’m not quite sure how to do that yet. My first thought is that the other player can put a condition on the character. How to structure that condition is the question. I’m thinking that the condition is treated like any other challenge but also akin to an agent that adds a die to the roll.

The character with the condition can attack it directly to deplete it or just endure it until it depletes.

David Johnston did a nice A6 layout for The Lost, my solo space survival RPG. It looks very nice when printed out in booklet form. I like it better than the original layout I did. David also drew a quick picture for the front which he said I should replace, but I don’t know, I kind of like it. It has a Buck Rodgers feel that’s raw and fun.

You can download it here!

The Lost solo RPG A6

Here’s a link to David’s ultralight game Microcrunch.

In OSR (and possibly other trad gamers I don’t know how wide spread the practice is) a hazard die is used as a clock to tell when an encounter happens. It’s a neat way of taking the load of timing when monsters show up off the GM’s shoulders and I’m for reducing loads on any player.

I have half a thought to introduce a hazard die to the Energy System but in the system’s style. In this case it would be a dice pool. The weird trick is that a hazard die is there to indicate a variable timing mechanism. In this case, that would be when a die depletes. Only that’s really weird because most rolls and their values are just ignored which seems like a waste.

Sometimes you can make a hazard die do more timing tasks. I think that’s what I’d like to do with rolls that don’t deplete but the system already handles most of the other things that people use to track with a hazard die.

It could indicate some kind of distance, or time interval. The system doesn’t really worry about those things though.

I could flip this and make the roll result be the number of dice in the next challenge. That means most rolls would be an encounter, but it doesn’t have to be a monster per se. It just indicates the intensity of the next challenge. When the pool depletes, You’ve reached the end of the adventure.

I’ll mull it over.

I pounded this out today. Let’s see where it takes you.

Gut Reaction is statless game. You roll and go with your gut because there are no numbers to base things off of.

Go with your initial feeling. “You study long, you study wrong!” Says it all. Don’t over think it, just go.

Here’s the PDF link.

Gut Reaction