Carving Towards The Game You Love Playing
Welcome to the Glyph and Grok - A weekly newsletter exploring topics in the tabletop gaming arena. We look at design, execution, research, and culture around role-playing games, board games, and related topics.
At the bottom of this post is a system neutral baddie for you.
Intro
I actually started on anything BUT Dungeons and Dragons. I have been fortunate to have people make me learn how to play a large swath of games (Star Wars RPG, Dark Heresy, Obsidian) and only really dove into 5E after getting hooked by watching Critical Role. The first game I ever game mastered was A Song of Ice and Fire Role Playing Game or SIFRP because I felt comfortable with the lore and didn’t realize how much you just make up as the GM. Maybe i’ll revisit that game and review the book for it. (Spoiler: It’s not great - I had to make multiple spreadsheets just to use the bulky systems)
Since D&D 5E leaves so much up to the GM to just figure out, I naturally got more and more sucked into game design to try keeping the players invested and the game interesting to all of us.
With the open game license (OGL) debacle of last year, i’ve been consuming all non D&D 5E books I could get my hands on looking for other systems to get intorduced to. I have gone from being an only 5E zealot (having introduced the game to my entire gameing circle and produced a couple GMs) and planning to run a D&D game for the rest of my life to shifting to whatever else I could find that my weekly group would enjoy.
So now I am an excavator, archeologist even, of interesting tidbits, rules, mechanics, and I am basically always trying to hone the game I run to be the best it can be. Of course, success is defined by me and my players really, but I do enjoy the hunt of looking for new things to make my weekly game all the better. I’ve started purchasing any PDFs I can get my hands on, and physical books for things that I love and want to have on the shelf. Bundle of Holding is a great resource for this because they have rotating sales ALL the time.
Game Design Side Quest
I’ve been seeing multiple mentions of the Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics (MDA) framework recently. As a fledgling designer for broader consumption, and as an engineer for my day job, I do so enjoy a good system for working through a process.
The creator of my current favorite game, the Arcane Library, has been putting out content-rich videos with their Shadowdark kickstarter updates and the most recent one was an interview with Sersa Victory who is an industry veteran. If you are at all interested in tabletop roleplay dungeon design, I highly recommend at least listening:
I’ve also been following Exuent Press here on Substack, which has had recent pieces on the 8 kinds of fun, Bartle’s Taxonomy of player types, and the MDA framework, Check them out here.
8 Kinds of fun
The above is an excerpt from the original paper written about the MDA framework. I don’t think in these terms often, but I can see how the definitions make alot of sense. For myself, I try to hit all of these at different times in roleplaying games i’m running. To me, this is largly determined by an abstract equation involving the group at your table, the game system your playing, and the context of the narrative being played. Sometimes you’re just there for the fellowship and talking to NPCs and shopping, and sometimes you’re in an epic set-piece battle of massive stakes and the loser is going to die. One of the reasons I love tabletop roleplaying games is this versitile ability to hit all the notes at different times.
The Carve
So you are a game master trying to create the environment for a great game at your table. How do you find and test system, mechanics, aesthetics to help that? What I do is offer to run new systems or rules for players I enjoy playing with and plumb them for as honest feedback as I can get. Direct questions about specific mechanics is the best way to do this. Most players will be happy they get to play and don’t have to run the game, so you have to ask past that and dig into the specifics to allow the player to be honest about what they like or don’t like without making them feel like they are harshing the game you’ve put together for them.
Typically, I will run or ask a friend to run a new system and just play it for a couple sessions. I think you’ve got to do 3-4 session so to really get a feel for how it plays. Then I will make note of things that are interesting, focus on what I play towards, what the other players seem to be playing up, or playing down. What are the players actually using from the rules and what are they skirting around? To me, form always follows function, so I’m looking for practical usability at the table. I’ve done this with Blades in the Dark for example using the scene rewind capabilities of a player as something a character in 5E could do with an inspiration.
I will take things from all over tabletopdom, from board games too, and I will try out mechanics I think could be interesting and add to the system being played. Many of these tidbits will more support narrative story telling, or underlying crunch. I’ve found alot of games really push narrative recently. Anything that is “powered by the apocolypse” system is leaning into action oriented story telling over getting bogged down in situational crunchy rules for every situation as if you’re playing a board game. Shadowdark on the other hand, while rules-light, still has alot of focus on the mechancis of exploring dungeons. I find myself loving to take a good crunchy system and flavor narrative tidbits or take a really more narrative system and weigh it down with more crunch. In taking these flavors from different things, I hope to eventually have a system at my table that works AND feels the way I want tabletop roleplaying at my table to be. I’m also hoping to evolve it into something new, but at least i’ll very happy with regularly running a game that is exciting and meaningful to my players.
This doesn’t always work out in a net positive. I’ve had rules and ideas i’ve tried (some for years) that I ended up scrapping. My players have not revolted against anything i’ve asked them to try, but I take it as a responsiblity to not push over that line and make them push me that hard. If an idea doesn’t work for any players at your table, do some real analysis and listen to their complaints with an open mind. Kill your darlings, supress your ego, and you can make magic. If after adequate time and thought, you think the criticism is not just, then don’t listen :)
In this way I strive to ever improve the game I run.
If this article helped you, please share it with your friends and please let me know your thoughts.
Useful Things For Your Game
Spotify Playlist Add - Baseline
Creature For Your Thoughts
I am currently playing Shadowdark RPG the most (I'll be posting a review once I get my copy - hopefully soon!), so my design will lean towards compatibility with that system. This is an Old School Revival (OSR) system so it is convertible to Dungeon Crawl Classic (DCC) and Old School Essentials (OSE) probably the easiest? Anyways, here's a monster for you:
Saras-Cavuri (Angler Crab)
Sometimes worshipped as a god by fisherfolk, The Saras-Cavuri projects a hormone that attracts prey. Combining the hormonal arousal of its victims with lifelike illusions projected out of the light in the front of its body, it makes itself all but invisible to its targets while they are under its influence. Sitting very still until the right moment, the Saras-Cavuri will attack with frightening violence once.
S: +2 | D: +1 | C:+2 | I: -2 | W: +0 | Ch: -2
HP: 30 (6 HD) | AC: 15 (Tough Shell)
Attacks: 2 Giant Claw +4 (within 10 ft.) [2d8 + pincer] or 1 Angler Hormone or 1 Angler Illusion
Pincer. DC 12 DEX or target is restrained.
Angler Hormone. DC 14 WIS or target will advance towards this creature’s illusion.
Angler Illusion. DC 14 INT or target is distracted by the projected illusion.
What I Am Up To
TTRPG Reading: Mythic: Game Master Emulator, Flee, Mortals!
Audiobook: Homo Deus - just finished!
Project: Almanac of Abominations Zine - System Neutral
Current Campaign: Shadowdark - Custom Setting (Giathos)
- 3/4 new characters. Some interestingly bad character attribute roles, but the party played real smart and explored almost an entire fort and took out an undead guardian with mostly level 1 characters. I do enjoy watching them kick butt sometimes.
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