This might be a controversial take, but I think it's okay for things to be "real" in roleplaying games. Like, sure you can tell your characters secret backstory to everyone in the group out of charactger and trust them to act surprised when it's revealed in character. You can trust your players not to act on knowledge they only know because they were in the room when you were describing something only one of the characters was privy to.
But you can also pass notes, you can take one player aside to reveal secret information, you can refuse to show your character sheet to the other players. You don't need to discuss how you're going to emotionally react to things you already knew.
Have you ever played City of Mist? It is a favorite. Somewhat tangentially, We have been looking into Troika and would love to hear if you have any experience or thoughts.
Haven't played City of Mist, but I keep hearing about it. I will probably check it out some day, but thus far the basic pitch of the game hasn't quite grabbed me. But I have been proven wrong about my first impressions of games and probably will again.
Troika is an interesting game. I have played it a couple of times while playtesting a module my friend @goblincow wrote, and honestly, I dig it! It is a very basic, stripped down fantasy RPG for the most part: a simple 2d6-based system, but what makes it feel special is that it has a lot of mechanics and setting elements that feel baroque on purpose.
Firstly, with regards to the setting elements: the game is great about worldbuilding by implication and leaving players with lots of room to fill in the gaps. And the stuff you discover is weird! There's a sword church! Dwarves are constructed, not born! There are swamp wizards!
And yeah, the mechanics definitely feel at times like they have been made kind of weird and baroque on purpose (for an example: the weird initiative system, having to convert damage rolls to actual damage on weapon specific tables, the whole list of spells and skills) to further sell the alienness of its setting. And while a lot of the mechanics are downright bizarre some of them are actually pretty effective and neat! Like how deep a character has packed a certain item into their bag being a consideration in how quickly the character can get it out!
As written I think the game would work perfectly for old-school style dungeon gaming albeit with weirder, more alien dungeons and I would very much like to try it again! My character in the game I played in was a swamp priest who taught bugs about marriage! Sadly, he died before he could take his beloved lady bug down the aisle. Poor Steve.
Replies are restricted so I will simply reblog. Every time We attempt to open up Troika something about trying to comprehend what is going on always seems to fail, however the art and general concept seems so compelling that We wish to find a good way to break through.
City of Mist is very good. I know there is a more cyberpunk adjacent add-on out.
We started with "Nights of Payne town" a couple of years ago and managed to finish it. The mechanics for power cards are some of the most freeing (with a grain of salt that We have not gotten to play many games) We have encountered.
It is a good game for anyone interested in mythology of any sort, anyone interested in a more modern/urban magic type setting, or honestly also anyone that has fun with personifying concepts. Our first character was the embodiment of a computer virus, and the source material pulls on many different mythos.
The only complaint We have is that in two cases (that We know of) they use mythology that is likely best kept untouched.
I say a lot of stuff on this blog about "play another game" and I really want people to understand what I mean about that. monopolies are bad. DnD has, through marketing and business decisions and luck and capital, dominated the entire hobby in a way that no other creative genre has ever seen before.
Stonetop is a “hearth fantasy” tabletop RPG set in an Iron Age that never was. The players portray the heroes of an isolated village near the edge of the known world. Their adventures focus on dealing with threats to the village and seizing opportunities. These aren’t rootless mercenaries seeking fortune and glory; they’re exceptional people, taking risks on behalf of their friends, family, and neighbors.
💥DIMENSION 20: NEVER STOP BLOWING UP! This explosive, action-packed, high-octane new season of Dimension 20 premieres June 26th on Dropout. Starring Brennan Lee Mulligan, Ally Beardsley, Ify Nwadiwe, Isabella Roland, Rekha Shankar, Alex Song-Xia, and Jacob Wysocki!
I’ve had some time to marinate on FH:JY and while I certainly enjoyed a lot of aspects I found the themes of the season to be very…impotent? And I think it has to do with the world building and the mechanics of DnD.
Like, if the theme of the season is rage and how to express it in a healthy manner or allow it to totally overwhelm you, it simply does not gel with the fact that canonically all of the Bad Kids are being explicitly trained to “impose their will on the world through violence”, to quote Aguefort himself.
It’s a DnD game, largely conflicts will be resolved through combat. Which is why we can get the Bad Kids saying things like “I don’t need vengeance, I don’t need justice” in roleplay scenes, and then immediately switching into ‘combat mode’, where, in a season SUPPOSEDLY about rage getting away from you, Riz can say ‘cut off his head so he won’t be Revivified’ about another teenager, and there will be no story consequences.
Because in roleplay scenes it’s very easy to insist you do not need the blade of Ankarna, but vengeance isn’t really about your family or your friends or the people who’ve hurt you who you love. It’s about the people you hate. Your enemies. And DnD demands that enemies be killed.
The story felt unfulfilling because by the time the Bad Kids rejected Ankarna’s justice they’d already used it. Hell, they wound up revivifying the Rat Grinders but explicitly skipping over Kipperlilly. Was that vengeance? Was that justice?
And Lucy Frostblade! She didn’t express any emotions about her killers, her friends. Did the Bad Kids enact justice on her behalf? How did she feel about it? Was it just, in her eyes?
This rant is getting too long but it bothers me how Kipperlilly’s rage and violence is considered “wrong” and “bad” and she’s considered a disgrace to Aguefort when the school is EXPLICITLY FOR making children into violent outlaws. You’re telling me Arthur Aguefort wouldn’t find it hilarious that she threatened someone’s grave with a backhoe to get a good grade? Come on.
found the fhjy postseason interview and what the fuck do you MEAN it was sinister ohhh I'm going crazy. realizing brennan lee mulligan hated these fucking kids this entire time oh my god
FAMOUSLY EVERYONE ALSO GETS DETENTION AND THE BAD KIDS CAME UP WITH /THEIR/ NAME THE DAY THEY MET. AND IT'S ALSO A GENERIC PARTY NAME BUT WAIT! IF YOU'RE DESTINED TO BE THE VILLAIN OF THE SEASON WANTING TO BE FRIENDS WITH THE PARTY YOU JUST MET IS SINISTER! dude. brennan when I catch you.
we as a community did not talk about Mentopolis enough. it was so gorgeous and hilarious and clever and touching and NONE of us gave it the time it deserved. i will fr start posting nothing but Mentopolis if i have to
gonna vent abt fhjy rn so bear with me for a second. i think the reason i like this season less than i want to is because there was very minimal character development. like don’t get me wrong there was some but there was not Nearly as much as fhsy. like i get wanting to have a campaign with starstruck energy bc they deserve for it to be fun but it’s difficult to balance that with already established characters that a wide audience already adores.
like me personally i fucking hated the balthazar and squeem bit, and i understand they couldn’t have older npcs because they’re too powerful but like. come on. you’re telling me aelwyn couldn’t have popped off a few counterspells? you’re telling me lydia didn’t get a turn womping on porter? you’re telling me the creator of the armor of ayda spell didn’t even get to use it?
also like there are Way too many loose ends here. like what about bucky and kristen’s parents? what about cassandra’s abandonment issues? why did gorgug and zelda break up in the first place? what was henry’s whole deal? what was the real backstory of the ratgrinders anyway? is baron still in riz’s suitcase? what was the point of any of the gilear curse plotline?
idk like i said don’t get me wrong i did still really enjoy the season but i have a lot of qualms with it i think
"I like it when the rules get out of the way of roleplaying" well I don't. I like it when the rules get in the way of roleplaying. They have to actively impede roleplaying. If the rules are allowing for any roleplaying at all, they are bad rules.
No but seriously the thing in quotes is such a puzzling statement to me, because like obviously I don't adhere to a reductive definition of roleplaying where it's like "roleplaying is when dice are not being rolled," but like... the rules can actually facilitate roleplaying! In fact, many good rules do! If you find that rules are impeding roleplaying you may be using the wrong rules and should perhaps consider different rules!
(and no I don't think D&D's rules in any way get in the way of roleplaying because they're combat-focused because combat and roleplaying are not mutually exclusive. In fact, D&D has a lot of mechanics that facilitate roleplaying in combat.)
I mean, idk. It feels like such an empty statement. No one actually enjoys rules that get in the way of roleplaying. What that statement is actually trying to say is that the speaker finds certain rules detrimental to their enjoyment in a roleplaying game. The rules are not actually detrimental to the actual act of roleplaying (no, seriously, they aren't!), you've just misidentified "not liking the outcomes certain rules produce" as "the rules getting in the way of roleplaying."
The solution is not necessarily getting rid of rules, but either a) accepting that there is value in the types of outcomes and narratives that the rules actually produced or b) looking for a game with rules that produce the types of outcomes you want.
I think this stems from the fact that a lot of people - especially people who only play D&D have a small reference pool of systems - don't seem to understand that rules and mechanics actually can support different kinds of storytelling, even within the same genre.
Like, let's take Masks and Sentinel Comics, for example. Both are comic book inspired superhero RPGs. But Mask's rules have mechanics that directly relate to relationships and power dynamics, as well as the way people see your character - including your character themselves. Meanwhile, it has almost no actual mechanics that are actually about the characters' superpowers.
Sentinels, on the other hand, is all about the powers. It has a system that makes it so that more potent powers can only be used when the situation gets dire during a fight. This immediately creates a different play dynamic wherein the focus is put on the characters using their cool powers to beat up bad guys.
So, if you wanted to play a superhero game in order to explore the way having superpowers impacts someone's life and relationships, you should play Masks. If you want to emulate a bombastic popcorn action flick, you'd go for Sentinels. If you try the other way round, you're doing the equivalent of shoveling snow with a soup ladle - yeah, it's technically possible, but the thing you're using was not designed for this activity.
I think there's also this tension with D&D specifically where rules = DM takes control. Players don't really have expectations for rolls, because the GM has full control determining its results. A success could be bad, or not at all what you want, or a failure could be good. When its all the whims of the GM, it can deteriorate the social contract. I keep this screenshot on hand because its the best descriptor of what I mean (credit to d vincent baker's blog):
The undermining of collaboration often ends up in one of two ways. Either players avoid all rules and mechanics, or they always default to the only rules that give them control, i.e. violence. When you succeed on your attack roll, you're guaranteed that a numby will go down. The DM can't take that away from you like they could with other rolls (well, they can, but they're less willing to because combat is more mechanized, its a more concrete ruleset than, say, skill checks). But more to the point, you have a effect. When numby hits zero, they're out, the result is mechanized and always available, no permission necessary. No other result is as easily reached without the obstacle of the DM in the way. And maybe you have a good relationship with your DM and can negotiate those terms—great, good for you! not everyone does though, there are plenty of strangers who form D&D groups who don't have this kind of relationship or conversation at the table, because D&D doesn't really facilitate it.
This is why I'm partial to Powered by the Apocalypse games. Players have expectations for their rolls, stated directly by the moves. As a GM, I can't take away their success, because it says right there, on a 10+ they can X Y and Z. This isn't obscured or hidden, nor relied entirely on the GM to remember and arbitrate the rule—its on the basic moves sheet, the piece of paper every player should have a copy of. I can ask permission to alter the result, but ultimately the players' autonomy is in their hands.
This is good analysis, I really like that observation.
My only addition is drawing attention to a sentence at the end of the screenshotted quote:
"You're depending on the GM's mood and your relationship and all those unreliable social things the rules are supposed to even out."
I think specificity would be very useful here.
Regardless of their intent I think that rules should not be assumed to be good at evening out "those unreliable social things." *
* which incidentally I think are also very reliable when designed for as "those unreliable social things" constitute both the means by which results are produced and also those results: in other words, that includes the entire experience of Play, which is supposed to contain the right friction in the right places to generate [insert preferred consequence of play here].
What rules are good at is specifically exacerbating and restricting those social things, and that's how a system defines itself – rules are imagined in a way that they produce certain results, regardless of whether those results are actually conducive to achieving their goals.
Much of the highlighted issue of imbalance of agency & communication in play (these are conversation games after all) is ultimately the result of design choices producing that outcome in that context.
Design is a choice or system of choices that produce outcomes in their context, and regardless of whether those results are intended the designs involved are still responsible for that outcome: to change the result, you have to make different choices.
Tabletop RPG rulebooks only serve to restrict and constrain us. So why is that a good thing?
Before I dive in, I'll refer everyone to Jay Dragon, who says things better than I can.
I think Jay's point that we like rules because we like restrictions is a missing piece of the conversation. The way those rules are designed changes the restrictions they place on players. I'm the same way lines on a coloring book page are tools, rules give us some structure for the overall piece. We can color outside those lines, but the shape is still there.
When I think about using rolls as task resolution, they are doing a lot of work:
They let the player ask a question, "what happens if I do X?" And it's more interesting to let that be a question of chance, because if the answer is always yes, that gets dull.
They let the GM disclaim responsibility for the outcome of something. "It's not my fault if this ends badly, it's the dice." Which is honestly an important part of the "social things" that the Bakers mention. I do want interesting things to happen to my players, but I don't want my players to be mad at me for making them happen.
They let the story go in interesting ways, (as long as they're asking interesting questions). When you have the control of a story to the dice, you are asking the story a question. It can surprise you, and delight you. That's why I like playing TTRPGs honestly.
To address the parenthetical party: A pet peeve of mine from the D&D podcasts I used to listen to was when a player asked if they would know or remember a thing they had learned about in a past episode, and the DM has them roll. Because "do you remember X" is not a very interesting question, 99% of the time. There are ways it can be interesting.
I've been thinking about this idea a bunch since the Brennan Lee Mulligan quote about why he uses 5e went around. He said:
Combat is the part I’m the least interested in simulating through improvisational storytelling. So I need a game to do that for me, while I take care of emotions, relationships, character progression, because that shit is intuitive and I understand it well. I don’t intuitively understand how an arrow moves through a fictional airspace.
And like, I think this is a better example of what I mean. I don't think "how does an arrow move through fictional airspace?" Is an interesting question 99% of the time. I can think of scenarios where it could be, but that's not enough to justify answering it 100% of the time. I think we do need rules to handle that 1%, but if "does it hit your target" is the more pertinent question, we should put that first.
Which is where design comes in. The designer is trying to answer questions before you ask them, and they can't predict them all, so they're giving the best answers they can based on what the game is meant to do. If they're doing their job well, they have given you enough structure to address the edge cases with the same tools you use every time. (And one of the reasons I dislike D&D is that it does, but a flat "D20 +modifier" for everything outside of combat is unsatisfying to me).
I know no game is perfect, but I do really like seeing how the rules are a structure and give me space to work. And, as Jay points out: there's a reason we don't (often) just sit around a table telling freeform stories.
what's weird about the fantasy high drama is that like. it seems to me like people forget d&d is primarily a) a game you play with your friends and also b) luck based.
I mean it's fine to say that "nothing felt like a challenge" and "they just dominated everything and there weren't any stakes" but like. it's not as if they weren't up against huge threats. they lost the mall fight. the last stand was an onslaught of enemies. they fought a dozen dragons from an airship. the fights were hard. they're just really good. they've had very good dice luck in general this season and are all very high level and highly specialized. fig is gonna beat deception and performance checks. adaine's gonna figure out the arcana. riz is gonna succeed investigations. like. for some reason their strategical competence and wisely picked abilities are. a downside? a disappointment?
the thing about d&d that you need to remember is it's first and foremost a game. it's mostly random and it takes you down weird paths and you're playing to have fun with your friends. the dice are literally telling the story that it's their time, it's their year. they've struggled enough. they've trained enough. they're good at what they do. and in my post about the academic/domestic/personal stressors being the focus, d&d doesn't have any other system to work them out than rolling different skills. that's what d&d is. brennan set specific challenge levels for different tasks and the players strategized to prioritize which abilities they were strongest in. the challenges were there. and the players rose to them. they were both smart in their delegation of responsibilities and lucky with their dice rolls. of which, both are foundations of d&d.
don't mistake them being good players and getting lucky with there being no hardship. just because they smashed through the wall, that doesn't mean the wall wasn't strong. they were just stronger.
ok ive slept on it i feel like i can talk about the ep better now... basically whats craziest to me is that if any of it was intentional it could be so good. i dont think wed ever actually get a season where the bad kids r protrayed as in the wrong, but if they were a little more self aware the ways that theyve also been overtaken by rage could be seen. gorgug especially, and especially because it was channeled through porter's mentorship, who the bad kids can conceptualize as manipulating gorgug but not the rat grinders. its interesting because esp w/o their favorite npcs this season the bad kids have rlly closed in on themselves and become a lot more codependent, seeming to constantly suspect anyone new of possibly betraying them. which in a meta way makes sense, cuz its players v brennan, but in universe it comes across as crazy paranoid and cliquey and theyre just so unaware of it that any way it could have come across as interesting comes across as frustrating instead. like a lot of what they do and say to the rat grinders comes across as straight up bullying, and they genuinely seem to derive pleasure from putting them down. which again, in a meta way makes sense, but in universe it makes u wonder WHY were meant to find the rat grinders dislike of the bad kids so horrible when the bad kids hatred is justified. even kipperlily at her worst thoughts -- those are thoughts she shared in therapy. are we meant to begrudge a 17 year old girl speaking to her therapist about her feelings? not even actions, literally just thoughts in her head? that she was again sharing, and probably couldve worked through if not for magical interference, confidentially in therapy? were meant to hate ruben, who doesnt even LIKE kipperlily either, who didnt start becoming the person the bad kids seem to hate until AFTER he died and was magically resurrected changed. why? oh because hes an enemy and this is a battle episode and hes on the field. ruben acting in what is quite literally self defense and being told "you were a waste of time" and having no idea whats going on and responding "what do you mean? youre killing my friends!" i swear to god if that insight check on buddy hadnt been a nat 1 i think we honestly would have gotten a whole different episode
"the ratgrinders, traumatised and manipulated teens, could have been redeemed if that subplot was explored and developed more" and "the bad kids, also traumatised, and in a life/death situation, are not responsible for healing these fellow kids" are opinions that can and should co-exist
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