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Archive for April, 2023

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Wandering Dungeons pt. 3 – putting it together

April 21, 2023

I’m slowly assembling this idea for a future campaign and it’s coming together well. I figured I might as well lay out an overview of how this works. It’s really combining a lot of the stuff I’ve written about in the last several months.

There’s a simple leading idea I’ve got here: The dungeons exist to create political conflict.

Concept
So the idea I’m taking is we have these magical places, dungeons, and sometimes they erupt from the ground and move along the land, spewing out monsters. There’s a few options to contain them, and at least keep the monsters from getting too out of hand, if you can’t be bothered to go through the effort to kill the “root” of the dungeon. Dungeons are a little bit like an SCP object in that way. So basically every town/state/etc. lives in constant management, or mismanagement of these magical disasters.

The Steps
Like most types of games I run, it’s high prep at the beginning and barely any between sessions. My GM Improv 101 post from…. geez, a decade ago, pretty much is a good outline of what we’re doing here, in a general sense.

  1. Roll up several dungeons using these Wandering Dungeon Charts.
  2. Write up some short ideas for towns/settlements managing/threatened by said dungeons.
  3. Roll up who the leadership/decision makers are and what their values/angles are.
  4. The values I get from the faction charts basically make it super easy to lay out NPC motivation Flags.
  5. Start dropping this all together on a map. Loosely follow Ring Layout for hexmaps, though because the dungeons might move over the course of the campaign, I’m not going to be as rigid about the layout. Give each town/settlement 2-3 dungeons that are potentially in a “problem range”, with many dungeons threatening 2-3 at the same time.
  6. Have the players create characters and tie them into one or more towns and with it, the politics & problems of that town.
  7. Run the game based on the player character’s motivation Flags and the conflicts erupting between all these places.

Specific Choices for My Group

  • Using a system that works well for theater of the mind + easy to improvise on the spot
  • Not going to actually map out dungeons; they’ll be a side thing to do here and there, but the real problems are the factions and politicking above ground. Even successfully clearing a dungeon will have political ramifications.
  • Although I have a map, we’re just going to skip through travel time; “a few weeks later” “after trudging through rain most of this trip…” etc.
  • I’ll be using hard scene framing to drop player characters into situations, more like running Primetime Adventures.
  • I’m going to experiment with a rough “scene prompter” tool I’m crafting for myself. Something to help with pacing and spotlight. We’ll see how it goes. It’s mostly a visual reminder tool, but if it works for me the way I’m hoping it’ll be very nice.

Now, you can certainly take the set of steps I have and run a full logistical hexcrawl and gridmap exploration kind of game. That’s the nice thing about this is that it’s a fairly flexible idea; whereas I want to focus on the politics of the world in dealing or not dealing with these magical disasters, you can zoom in to playing the squads clearing the dungeons or flip the focus around to whatever system fits best.

It’ll probably be a few months before enough players get free from our existing groups to try this out, but I’m looking forward to it.

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Fiction First – What it is, what it isn’t

April 20, 2023

I’m seeing a conversation happen online, which is… using “fiction first” to mean something very different than the years of discussion that used it before. I’m not in the “words can never change” category, but if you look up theory on “fiction first” you’re going to get a very WEIRD idea about what people were talking about if you have this wrong.

“Fiction” in old RPG theory terms

The word “fiction” meant the imaginary things in the RPG we’re playing. As opposed to us real people at the table, as opposed to the “setting” (ideas which exist, but aren’t in play at the moment), as opposed to cues (dice, paper, miniatures, physical things that one could point to, also including virtual character sheets, maps, etc. on a screen).

Fiction First

Fiction first meant that the fiction (imaginary facts/events/situation) took precedence over the mechanics. That doesn’t mean to regularly, always, ignore mechanics, but it does mean that we are always looking to the fiction BEFORE engaging the mechanics and only in light of how they serve them.

So, an extreme example, is a classic D&D type game, a character has their enemy on the ground with a sword to their neck. If they strike, don’t roll the dice, the enemy is dead. That’s one way to do fiction first. You might note this is a close cousin to “Rulings not rules” type play. You’ll also notice this kind of thinking is heavy in Apocalypse World “Do harm as established”.

In the lesser case, if you want to sneak into a castle or something, and you say “I’m going to roll Stealth” the GM might ask for you to provide ideas of how you’re going about this. This is specifically because that lets them know what modifiers or challenges or problems might make sense for you based on the fiction. Are you climbing the wall? Are you going in through a sewer tunnel? Are you clinging to the bottom of a cart as it comes in? All of this determines modifiers, subskills if needed, and the type of failure outcomes.

It’s easy to see how people took this as a verb statement “no you have to SAY the fiction first BEFORE you roll the dice” but again that’s not quite what folks were talking about.

The New “Fiction First”

I’m seeing people use this term for “story focused games”. This leads us down the path of why folks ended up with a lot of jargon because consider all of these Very Different Things that go into “story focused” games:

  • A game that is a single, specific scenario (A murder mystery box for example)
  • A game that has a campaign book of specific events the GM will run you through
  • A game where the character’s personal drama is the core feature
  • A game where there are “scene tokens” you must earn to get “scenes” to do things
  • A game where we have “spotlight” scores that determine which character should be focused on this session
  • A game where you get positive modifiers the more “cinematic” your actions are


These are all not the same thing and part of the problem was “story” was a vague word meaning 30 different things. (Much like Immersion) There are many games with high abstraction mechanics, which may, or may not, be “story focused”. There are games with some kind of scene economy, which may, or may not, be “story focused”.

So the irony is I’m seeing people complain about “high abstraction” games or “narrow scenario” games as “Fiction First” while also saying that games where you freeform and follow the logic of the fiction are better.

Or literally what was Fiction First.

I know, it’s the internet. You cannot control how terms change.

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Wandering Dungeons Part 2

April 19, 2023

I wrote about Wandering Dungeons a couple of months ago.

In short, the idea is that they pop up out of the ground like a volcanic vent, move across the land, and pose a threat. In that version I had them a bit more mythical with specific archetype monsters in them, however you don’t need them to work that way; it can just be a “normal-ish” dungeon set up with the idea it’s magically creating/spawning monsters every so often.

For this post, I add on some random roll tables to decide how bad of a problem is a given dungeon and how well the local people are or are not dealing with them. I suggest rolling them up THEN placing them on your map if you’re doing a hexcrawl type game, just so the outcomes can make sense logistically; if the dungeon is contained by a large number of soldiers, you probably want a city or town nearby that explains how they’re getting supplied, etc.

How we deal with dungeons

Ideally; a dungeon has a containment wall built around it, manned by sufficient warriors, with regular patrols, scouting, mapping, and offensive pushes deeper until the root is destroyed.  

Practically, a well tended dungeon has some of these, and a poorly tended dungeon has maybe a small stone watchtower with a beacon or perhaps a small garrison to keep things from getting away too far.

Logistics D6: 1-3 = choose 1, 4-5 choose 2, 6 choose 3.

  • Encroaching – the dungeon is near or in the middle of residential area or a resource
  • Traveling – the dungeon is moving relatively quickly & is hard to contain
  • Unpredictable – the speed and direction is not easy to follow
  • Hostile Environment – Underwater, full of poisonous spores, etc.

Monsters D6: 1-3 = choose 1, 4-5 choose 2, 6 choose 3.

  • Numerous – Produces quite a few monsters
  • Excursions – Monsters come out frequently, more than once a month even.
  • Cunning – The monsters & traps are clever and tricky
  • Powerful – The monsters are very strong

Containment D6: 1-3 = choose 1, 4-5 choose 2, 6 choose 3.

  • Paltry – Few or no defensive structures. Maybe the previous ones are in ruins.
  • Undercut – Few or no suppression personnel.  Maybe underfunded, maybe assigned elsewhere.
  • Uninformed – little or no intel, either through bad communication & records or no chance to get it
  • Unsupported – Little or no support from local population; either they can’t or don’t want to help

Adventurers?

Places that are barely contained probably have no one to stop adventurers from going in, and, maybe hope such types will help find and destroy the root of the dungeon. But generally they’re probably used to foolhardy and desperate types going in and maybe one or two stragglers coming out, wounded and terrified.

Places that are well contained probably have a number of rules and expectations; they’ll give intel and some basic supplies but probably put stipulations on where you can go or what you can do. This isn’t only “oh you can’t get treasure here” but other concerns like “we managed to lock this really bad thing over in this section so DO NOT OPEN THAT DOOR” or “If the devilbugs get to the surface everyone’s going to lose their crops so don’t even go in the eastern cave section” and similar reasons.

This basically means the better the containment is, the more the party will need to do a bit of social angling and politics. (And also that the easy problems in that dungeon are probably well taken care of, leaving only… worse ones.)

And then there’s the people

This also means you can do a lot of fun stuff with Faction Personalities – who is in charge of troops? What nobles or leadership funds these folks? How about the local villagers, how do they feel about the soldiers? Are there other adventurer bands also trying to scout and clear out the dungeon?

Easy ideas to play with:

  • A dungeon/monsters threatens a settlement & people are desperate to stop it
  • A dungeon/monsters threatens slums/oppressed group & the authorities aren’t trying to contain it
  • A dungeon has been well contained and no one thinks they really need all those defenses
  • A dungeon has erupted in a town/settlement & half of the people want to flee the other half want to keep their homes
  • A cruel lord has sent criminals as the suppression patrols into a dungeon. Whoever kills the root is pardoned.
  • Desperate villagers and locals have formed a militia and are hoping they can stop the monsters
  • A dungeon, once not a problem has suddenly and drastically spawned more numerous and dangerous monsters
  • Some young noble of little standing looks to make a name clearing the dungeon
  • Someone found a jackpot of treasure, now it’s a gold rush of unqualified people delving and dying

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Alchemy RPG VTT – halfway there

April 17, 2023

As I posted last time, I’ve been looking for a better tool for the types of games I want to run online. Ironically, in most cases, it’s not that a VTT/diceroller/etc. doesn’t have enough options, it’s that the options are poorly set up for the games I want. I saw this video review of AlchemyRPG.com and started poking around.

First Look

It’s clear that Alchemy RPG is built on visual appeal; the most immediate thing you see is one of the animated backgrounds that fills the screen and looks a lot like a title screen or load screen for a videogame. I’m neither here nor there about that, but I do think it’s interesting because it points this VTT towards being more theater of the mind type play, and the issues I do have with it, are where they move away from that purpose (more later).

The Good

Most of the UI works very well for what I want. Keeping players on one tab/window, without having to juggle a ton of pop ups or do a ton of scrolling/dragging to get to info (for the most part). You can have two score trackers on screen at all times – so hitpoints or luck or whatever tends to fluctuate often in play can be right there. Making macros is super easy, which means we can just have 1-2 “roll dice” action buttons on screen at all times, which means games with a single resolution type (PbtA, percentile games, games that use a single die, etc.) can be used completely that way without needing any other actions. Each player can access a section to write notes with one click, which I think will make a huge difference for my players in taking notes.

Overall, the immediacy of action is what appeals to me, more than the cool backgrounds set up.

The Hurdles

However, it’s also clear that AlchemyRPG is looking to get into the automation game of trying to have a characters’ full stats in the system… and then you get back into the issue of having to open/scroll/find the exact skill/ability to get the benefit of automation. That sort of thing makes the most sense when the game has a lot of calculations… which isn’t really what this is set up for. It also has a simple map option they’ve added, but again, this leads us back to moving away from the core design.

In the larger picture, when you look at their Marketplace, it’s either animated background art or mostly D20-ish stuff (the crunchy stuff this isn’t great for) at fairly premium prices. The subscription lets a GM create a number of content entries like NPCs. However, if you’re not going to go for all the effort of automation… there’s never a reason to pay for it. So I’m a bit concerned about what the business model is and how long they can keep it running. I’m definitely going to play with using the VTT, but I wouldn’t put a huge amount of campaign notes in there until it seems like a more solid set up. If they were to get some indie games that would be well suited to the VTT system they have, I’d consider buying some, but… you gotta work with what’s there, not future dreams.

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The UI Hurdle

April 3, 2023

I’ve been playing a lot of RPGs online for… well, more than a decade now. One thing that has occurred to me is that the user interface for playing online has… stalled out after a point. Generally we have virtual tabletop services that you can use which unfortunately have the tendency to automate things in a way that is more complicated and difficult than the non-automated option you would normally have.

Why is this so hard?

Last year I ran Thirsty Sword Lesbians, which is a Powered by the Apocalypse game. PbtA games are usually a low-medium crunch game with a very easy “handle” or interface for players;

  • Say what you want to do
  • Roll 2d6 add or subtract a number no greater than 3
  • Pick from a list on the Move the GM told you

Playing on Roll20, however, using the system that is literally built in for TSL specifically, every roll was kind of an involved affair:

  • Open up your character sheet
  • Hunt for the Move on the character sheet. Scroll to find it.
  • Hunt for the pop up window asking if you want a modifier added (doesn’t always pop up to the front)
  • Then Roll the dice, jump over to the main Roll20 window
  • Go back and find your character sheet window and look for the Move to actually figure out what the roll outcome means.

This would… be more reasonable if you only did this a few times a session, but you tend to do it like a dozen times or more, and that’s for each player, and it never seemed to get easier. The UI turned an easy process into a painful process.

While this is the most egregious example, it’s also true of most other games I’ve run or played; the interface makes playing or running games harder, rather than easier, most of the time. I’ve been running a campaign of Errant and I realized not having an integrated character sheet in Roll20… made things faster. We recently moved to rolling physical dice and calling results rather than using the roller in the app, and things are faster still. So…

The Minimalism Workaround

This isn’t a manifesto or some kind of call to “ideals through play”, just… a set of workarounds I’m going to play with over the next year and see how much it improves my play experience in speed, mental load, and handling; as well as the experience of my players.

The basic principle here is readability and minimalism is better than completeness when and where the UI is not well set up.

Methods I’m going to work with:

  • Skip dice rollers, use physical dice and call outcomes where possible.
  • Go for minimalism/cleaner designs in character sheets over completeness/complexity; some things players can figure out to drop into a “notes” section if they want to record it, while other things are play-critical to track.
  • Reduce the number of tabs/windows a player will need to reference. Ideally just character sheet if possible.
  • Where maps are needed, consider other collaborative presentation tools to have maps + tokens rather than the mess that is most VTT systems.
  • Play around with in-browser tools to assist navigating tabs/windows where needed. (For example, Chrome’s “Group Tabs” will let you a) have a group with only a single tab in it, and b) color and rename that tab – making it easier to find)

Key restrictions include:

  • I don’t want my players to have to pay for new apps/services
  • Whatever we use has to run on older computer hardware
  • We are all very tired and half brain fried by the time we get to play; we do not have the capacity to learn new hotkeys or juggle through 8 massive bars of icons that look more at home on a professional art software system than a game of imaginary magic sword wielders.

I’m not sure I have an answer, and I’ll probably have to come back at the end of the year with some better ideas or discarding others, however, given the general stalling out of VTTs, I don’t think waiting and suffering is better than just doing the ideas I’ve got now.

Anyway, feel free to play with some of these if you, too, have been finding the small bumps in online UI getting increasingly more annoying and time consuming, and I hope we can figure something out until someone can do better for “needs more support than freeform, needs less tools than ‘complex layered map + 500 condition tracking stat’ games”.

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