A Tale of Two Stories

This one is for Aaron the Pedantic. It has been bouncing around in my head since watching this livestream awhile back:

Dungeons & Dragons aspires to be a Virtual Reality experience. Rather than use keyboards and monitors and goggles, it does so using narration and the human imagination, which are more convenient hardware and software to work with. I do not believe that our technology is yet even remotely close enough to provide the same level of VR immersion that D&D can to a vivid daydreamer.

Because of the way our brains engage with narrative, we treat the DM's narration as "truth," at least temporarily; so long as it maintains a certain level of verisimilitude. And, that suspension of disbelief serves to help us let the VR experience unfold. in D&D, Narrative doesn't exist to tell a story per se, it exists to help you see what happens; it delivers the experience. The dice and crunchy mechanics dictate the shape of the Narrative to some degree, both to ensure that the Narrative remains interesting and does not hit dead ends. And they serve to make sure that the narrator, the Dungeon Master, remains an impartial observer and interpreter of the rules, rather than a biased one.

There is a lot of muddled discussion over whether Dungeons & Dragons "tells a story" at all. That confusion comes from the fact that the word "story" has two different connotatively similar denotative meanings. On the one hand anytime we narrate events, we can be said to be telling a "story." On the other we have a structured art of creating a satisfying narrative with a beginning middle and end, deeper moral meaning, symbolism, and a message which we call a "story".

Telling someone about the funny thing that happened while you were waiting in line at Starbucks is not the same as performing Macbeth. They are both called "stories" even though they are radically different things. This is a major source of the confusion.

Campaign Fronts + Depletion Dice = Devastation Dice

Last night, while working on campaign notes I came up with a brainstorm, and I wanted to share it here. It is a way to create a sense that your world is a living thing, with its own complications going on in the background.

Next to the 20  Quick Questions About your Campaign Setting entry on Jeffs Gameblog, one of my favourite tools for planning D&D campaigns is the fronts Dungeon World. I'd always used something similar, but it was really helpful to find a formalized way of making use of that planning mechanism.

What I am Working on Right Now

This month I'm trying to do lighter weight work for my blog so I can focus more on writing Adventure modules and other content. Since the second lockdown, life got really busy at home and I haven't been able to put out a new module since The Bloody Engines of the Dinosaur Men back in October. 

So in the name of making myself more accountable, I wanted to tell you all what I was working on at the moment, so people can ask me how it's going or give me feedback on my ideas. The rest of the month will be dedicated to discussing the learning curve on turning your ideas into modules, and why you might choose to do it.

Sometimes, You Need a Plot

"Mary Pickford" Image by Eric Perlin from Pixabay 

I have had a frustrating couple of months of TTRPG play. I want to tell you about what I have been running into, and how I fixed it, in case you might be colliding with the same issues. Namely, of multiple campaigns fizzling ou it a row. 

I am currently involved in five games:

• My playtest game with a cousin and some old Highschool friends, which is a blend of B/X Dungeons & Dragons, Index Card RPG Core 2e, and the odd break for Dungeons Crawl Classics RPG.
• Stephen Smith's World of Weirth game, which is a heavily house-ruled game of Low Fantasy Gaming that is rapidly becoming its own game.
• A game of B/X D&D taking my wife and oldest son through several classic adventures (the Mentzer tutorials, The Ruins beneath the Tower of Zenopus, Castle Mistamere, Keep on the Borderlands).
• Sporadic tests of my ultra-light kid-oriented TTRPG Square Dungeon. Usually while walking my son home from school. 
• A home campaign played with my wife and a rotating cast of friends and family. Usually ICRPG, DCC, or Low Fantasy Gaming. Often with strong accents of Blades in the Dark. 

All told, I play about 12-15 hours a week.

A Case of the Fizzles

With my playtest group, some of my frustration arises from daily life, flus, sick kids, wildfires, work emergencies, etc. California's power grid has been a particular menace to my group. Fair enough. 

Gaming with a five-year-old is its own challenge.

The big issue, however, has been a that my home and playtest games have suffered issues with player engagement. I have had several fizzles... At home I ran several campaigns that started well and ran 4-6 sessions, then, once the initial adventure and its aftershocks were over and the game opened up to a sandbox with a few rumors of looming threats and dangers, my players' excitement would wane.

I faced the same issue with my Test Group to a lesser extent. Once they reached Baddenach and had some down time, the intense, high-energy engagement they had been giving me waned. It took me a couple of weeks to get the game rolling again.

Rules Cyclopedia Update 1

I have updated the Deathtrap Games Rules Cyclopedia with some adjustments for ease of reading, and nine new rules, making a dozen additions since last week:

• Survival Economics
• Weapon Depletion
• Gear Quality
• Watch and Learn
• Advantage/Disadvantage as Dice
• Last Breath
• A Lover's Comfort
• Steal the Spotlight
• Death is Not the End
• Boosts
• Progressive Damage
• Wine Recovery / For Medicinal Purposes

These rules are taken from my favorite gritty, dirty, and naughty resources out there to focus on survival, breaking gear, and showing off your character's specialties.

Happy Hacking! 

I Have a Guest Post on Grumpy Wizard

In case you missed it, I have a guest post up on Grumpy Wizard.  It bears the provocative title "There is no Dungeons & Dragons" and it is about a critical shift in mindset worth trying on.

I have also had a couple of my articles featured on the truly awesome OSR roundup podcast Thought Eater. Listen here. 

The first was in Episode 185, an episode that made me run out and buy Mothership.

Then Episode 187, where Froth kindly drew some attention to my Rules Cyclopedia project. 

Guest Post: Just Play

This guest post is graciously provided by Travis Miller over at Grumpy Wizard. A favourite spot of mine on the TTRPG / OSR blogosphere.

Just Play 

“Are we going to stand around admiring the problem or are we going to fix it?” - My wife on a video conference with her colleagues

Gamers, as a tribe, are thinkers and readers. We are readers of the humanities; literature, philosophy and history in particular. Many gamers are academics and have injected the tools of their trade into the hobby. The academy has powerful tools of inquiry. Great insights into the world have been made by trained academics. Gamers have adopted those tools in our own conversations about games. Talking/writing about games has become its own hobby. I’m certainly a game theory hobbyist if I’m honest with myself. This hobby of game theorizing and modelling doesn’t necessarily lead to making better games. 

Academics, particularly in the humanities, have a bad habit of being so far up their own asses that they A) Don’t realize their tools are domain specific and B) Humans are too complex for theories and models to tell the whole story C) They don’t actually test what they’ve learned. That’s for other people.