Archive for July, 2025

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Designing for the future of your RPG

July 23, 2025

The world of videogames sometimes teaches us things

For the last month or so, I’d been following the general stuff going around with videogames’ Stop Killing Games initiative – the big proponent, Ross of Accursed Farms, I had been following for years. He had a pretty simple goal; to preserve videogames. His channel, he plays a lot of older games, which means having to do a lot of funky software hackjobs to get the games to run at all.

However, the Stop Killing Games initiative is more about the modern games and the ways in which publishers can simply cut off your access to a game, with the goal to force them to make future games with an end-of-life plan so that people can enjoy the game even if the publisher disappears.

Games only 20 years ago are disappearing

In the world of tabletop RPGs, someone in my circles has started GM’ing Primetime Adventures for another circle who has never played or heard of it. I recent came up with a fun scenario to run for Sorcerer. People recently asked about Vincent Baker’s Dogs in the Vineyard. There was a thread of people asking about favorite tactical games and I had to still mention Riddle of Steel. I was trying to look up the SRDs to a couple of games and the sites have died years ago.

Many of these games are no longer publicly, legally available to acquire as a book or PDF.

Oh, and then I started hearing about Itch dot io deciding to start shadowbanning games… Some of which have ONLY had their lives on that platform and nowhere else.

Why not? Why shouldn’t we have a little plan of our own?

And it got me to thinking about how for tabletop RPGs, maybe we need to think about “end of life” plans for games. Maybe, if your game is no longer available for purchase for (x number of years), the PDF version becomes available as a Creative Commons license of some type.

Ok, maybe it’s too hard to legally enforce “WHEN was it still legally available”, if that’s the case, just pick an arbitrary year for yourself like “In 2040 this game will be under (CC license type)” or whatever.

See, a thing about RPGs is that we’re not dependent on technology which might not be produced anymore; you might not have a console that runs a type of cartridge, but you have a mind and friends and you can pick up and play an old RPG the same way you can play a new RPG. There’s really no reason for them to die out at all.

And yes, there’s plenty of illegal archives floating about, but, obviously, they make it harder to find something AND potentially put people at risk of viruses and other issues, while an acknowledged legal version allows institutional libraries to form that can share your game indefinitely.

Anyway, we live in a time where many powerful groups look to erase access, to destroy ideas and art. It’s probably a good idea for us to collectively think hard about how to keep those things alive through the storm.

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Fantastic Respite and the Horizon of the Real

July 14, 2025

It’s kinda bad times all around. It’s been bad times for years now, just more now, now. In this kind of times, you want a little escapism, “for a few hours, we were free”, as Sinners put it. But also you want to vent some of the feelings of the real world, too, so it can’t be 100% divorced from our world.

It’s tough. All my friends are going through it to some level.

And I think about this a lot when I put together a campaign, or suggest a game. “How real are we gonna get? Is this too close to something that’s really bad for someone in one of my groups? What’s the right place to aim for, how far or close should be to the bad times, the real times, the here and the now.”

Running into a wall

Years ago I remember some online folks who were first introduced to the idea of playing vulnerable, tough topics decided the thing to do was to emotionally check out while going maximum edgelord. It was a combo of toxic masculinity and online hatebro logic: “If you feel anything about this you’re not strong enough, go harder, go more fucked up.” as if it were some kind of roleplaying school of Jackass.

Be like water, actually

Yes we have safety tools. But if we were to use the analogy of driving; turn signals and road rules are the best tools of prevention, honking, defensive driving, and brakes the second best, and seatbelts, airbags and crumple zones being the tools you never want to have to use – and if we’re talking about groups of people already frazzled and barely making it, they’re “worse drivers” or worse at navigating their situation and needs, not intentionally, but just because already. If you can plan ahead for safety and better play, better to get closer to the goal before we get started.

Even thinking about what you want to do, what you can do, is an energy expenditure when you’re at the edge of getting by.

Cover it, cover it again, and cover it once more

If I want a piece of the real world terribleness, and I throw it through a few rounds of allegory or covering up. Sometimes what people need is a pinata version of the bad thing; they’re still gonna get the catharsis but the cartoon version is easier to deal with when you’re running thin.

These days, though, it feels like it’s gotta get more layers, be further away. Placed on the horizon as it were. You can see it, but you can ignore it a bit, and focus on what’s in front of you. A boundary, a magic circle, a place where you can be in a place where you hold more power than the world burning around you. A place where you can remember who you were always meant to be, and, will be, someday past the time that exists.

Escapism isn’t action, but things that cause you to believe in yourself, each other, and a future? That’s the foundation for action.

Masks on, masks off

When I was much younger, a lot of people around me took a path towards death. They couldn’t see a reason to live, so they kept going on that path until they didn’t. I saw how important it was to find a joy, not a fake joy, but something real, and powerful. That can be in art, a vision, a dream, a game.

Putting the mask on the things that hurt you isn’t unreal, and taking the mask off yourself is as real as it gets. When you see what’s underneath, you might find a real reason to endure and to do what is right, here, now, in the face of it all.

Games are not therapy, games are not spiritual growth, but they are something that can show you something about yourself and life. That’s not a small thing.

I don’t have answers, just a lot of feelings. I hate that roleplaying games have gotten better while everything around us has gotten much worse. I want them to be much better than a fantastic respite where we keep a distant horizon of the real, but here we are.

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Load Bearing vs. Fragile Design

July 9, 2025

I think one of the phrases of modern RPG design I’ve grown to dislike is “fragile design”, because it misses the context of larger game design outside of RPGs: many games are made with just enough rules to work, and when you pull some out, the game stops working, or works in such a different way you can’t say the experience is the same at all.

If you pull two wheels off your car, does it make sense to complain that it drives poorly? After all, your bicycle rides just fine with two wheels.

Are some rules load bearing? Yes. Are some things non-procedural directives that are as load bearing as rules with numbers? Also yes.

If your game is designed to be modular, it’s probably worth noting which systems/aspects are load bearing and which aren’t. Outside of that, all you can really do is try to make affordances to make a game easy to play, not impossible to break.

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A peek into the project

July 5, 2025

The game I’ve been grinding at currently has the working title “A Blade Uncertain” which, I guess fits because I haven’t settled on the title, aiyah. Anyway, this is a fantasy RPG designed to fill much of the niche that my friend’s highly modded 5E game does, without being married TO what D&D does; or rather, to be the kind of system that hits what she’s been trying to get from D&D, in spite OF D&D.

So anyway, a peek into character creation.

Stats & Background

We have 4 attributes; Physique, Deftness, Insight, Acumen. They each start at 7, we roll 4d6 and assign a die to add to each one.

I get 2, 2, 5, 5. I’m going with Physique 12, Deftness 9, Insight 9, Acumen 12.

For your Background you can choose or roll for one of the 4 options (Sword & Strife, Sigil & Sorcery, Wits & Wiles, Pacts & Promises).

I roll Sword & Strife:
Your life began in a place with common conflict and the potential of violence.  Perhaps that was a military camp or garrison town, maybe it was rough life in the back alleys or a noble court where duels and assassinations were known to happen.

Choose one:
– I became ready to take on danger head on. (+3 HP)
– I learned cunning to never fight fair. (+3 Focus)
– I learned how to never be a target to begin with. (+1 Deftness)

So normally we’d have a basic setting outline to work with and I’d fit this within it. Since I’m just coming up with a character for the sake of it, I’ll say maybe my character was born in a fortress town full of mercenary families; lots of simmering blood feuds kept under control by a ruthless lord. I’ll pick “learned to never be a target to begin with” simply because it sounds interesting to have someone who might have a lot of past connections/rivalries mostly dealt with by avoidance.

Skills

This game runs on the “either you have training in this or you don’t” and doesn’t get into the granularity of how much training you have. Checks are either Easy, Normal or Hard and having a Skill improves it 1 step.

Since I’m thinking of this character having grown up in an area with lots of fraught rivalries and avoiding them, I’m going to go with Blending In, Making a Show of Things, and Healing & Herbalism as my 3 starter skills

Bonus Abilities

Since I rolled low on 2 stats, I get 2 Bonus Abilities. By averages, most players will have 1 stat that qualifies at least.

Since I’m leaning towards an armored type, I’ll pick:

Heroics

If you are adjacent to an ally who is at 5 or less HP, spend 1 Focus, you can take a hit intended for them. You can do this as many times as long as you can pay the Focus and aren’t knocked out from injuries. Gain 10 XP every time you do this.

I guess it also makes sense if I’m going to eat hits, I might want help recovering from that:

Plucky

When you do a 10 minute rest, you are recovered to ½ HP +3d6.  If your HP is already higher than that, you regain nothing.

Classes

In this game, you pick 2 classes. Each class gives you some HP & MP, and a set of abilities. Right now I’ve got 12 classes, and they feel good, but I’m also not locked in on the names yet either.

Since I’ve already decided on a “tank” type, I’m taking Vanguard as my first class. The important part is that among the abilities I get these two:

  • Worn armor counts as 1 stronger for you and adjacent allies behind you
  • Once per round, swap positions with an adjacent ally, including outside of your turn.

Now… just for the sake of fun, I’m also thinking about playing against type a little, so I’ll take Skirmisher as a second class. Among the abilities I get 3 things:

  • If you move at least 4 squares, you have +2 Armor until your next turn.
  • Once per round, you can pre-emptively attack an opponent before they attack you outside of the normal turn order.
  • If you have 5 or more unoccupied squares adjacent to you when you attack, do +2 damage.

So I’m thinking the tactical options here are: move away from allies to get the armor bonus and make an attack with bonus damage for unoccupied squares, then retreat back TO the allies, pre-emptively strike when the enemies come close AND with the armor bonus, soak up other hits for allies. The Skirmisher also gets a little bonus for ranged weapons so there’s flexibility there too.

Broad Thoughts

One of my goals in this whole thing is to make a game where you can get solid tactical design with also a minimal build mastery required. Your biggest choice is what 2 classes you want, and secondarily if you rolled any Bonus Abilities. Sure, some things will synergize better, but I want to minimize both “plan everything out to make your build” and “god this character is unplayable” balance issues.

Anyway, I need to get some friends together to playtest a bit since the game DOES require some math balancing and that will determine a lot more from there. The one really encouraging bit was in showing the character options to said GM friend, she was very excited and had several character ideas sparked from the choices available. Aside form a “sneak peak” to you, the general public, it’ll be a good post I can point my players to AFTER they’ve made characters to maybe ask what thoughts went through their heads and help me figure out guidelines and wording the final product down the line.

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Copy Heavy Games

July 4, 2025

Let’s say we’re playing a game, and when you make your character, you pick one of 8 archetypes and that’s the majority of the mechanical choice you make; everything else is like “name, appearance” etc. So the choice part is not deep and complicated, you don’t have to think very hard about multiple systems interacting, or point balance, or anything.

But then, you have to get the archetype mechanics into a playable reference. Maybe you have a printer and you can just print it; great. Maybe you don’t. So then what? Do you hand copy a page of text, or several sentences and sub rules about how abilities work? Do you screenshot the page and track changing parts seperately? Use some program to put editable boxes over parts?

This is what I call a “copy heavy” game; the players or the group are expected to copy large amounts of information over into a more useable format. For in person play, things like PbtA playbooks or pre-printed spell cards for reference have become a regular thing. And this is also probably the number one reason VTTs that have character builders or easy “drag and drop” interfaces for spells or powers are popular; the copy process is simplified.

I think at this point in the hobby, if your game has a “copy heavy” aspect, you should be thinking about designing tools, printable, or online, that can ease that hurdle.

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