Galahads: Can You Do It Again?

 

The experience of designing Crescendo was unlike anything I had gone through before. What most call “design”, I have found to be refinement. Purification. What most call design is simply taking an idea that already existed and working it. What I did with Crescendo was not that. It was the discovery of an object that did not exist, but should. Playtesting was discovery of something that we could all feel, but not necessarily see or understand. I felt more like a gardener, refining something that was growing apart from whatever I was putting into it.

Somehow, some way, I am supposed to do that again with Galahads. Can I, however? Is that a possibility? Is it advisable?

Attempting to Clarify the Question in the Title

The vast majority of "design" in the RPG space is iteration. This shouldn't be a controversial thing to say. I hope it isn't shocking, at the least. The vast majority of our TTRPG space is just an iteration of 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons, as exemplified in 5.5 DnD. RPGers are a hilariously conservative bunch, by and large. A small subsection of our hobby proves our conservative nature, by being as reactionary as possible. What, you think something like Thirsty Sword Lesbians isn't reactionary in nature? Most of the storygaming sphere is just that: a reaction against. But reactionaries will never win their war. Storygaming as it exists is doomed, as the OSRites claim... they don't just understand they're just as badly off. What I am doing is not conservative, nor is it reactionary. I want to create, to pull something out what could be, should be, but isn't.

With the advent of Enter Sandman, I saw something unusual: what a creative act actually is. And, because I saw what real creativity looked like, just for a moment, I knew what I needed to do on my end.

Anyone who thinks I'm saying The Warning's cover of Enter Sandman is the only creative thing in the world desperately needs to reread.

For lack of a better word, I found an experience, that I knew had never been done before. It was just sitting there. Like a chess piece under the couch. I held this chess piece in my mind, and resolved to never let go of it. 

What was that experience, you may ask?

• A slow burn igniting into an unpredictable climax of drama.
• Deeply personal, psychological gameplay that allows people to push their boundaries in a safe and entertaining manner
• All happening across a mythic and tragic backdrop. The world turns and rots and burns on a scale no one can truly master.

I dove in. And it was the most wonderfully terrifying task I ever set mind to. I knew what I needed to honor: this shining thing that filled my mind's eye with a bright darkness. So I just.. ran the game. A ton. An absolute ton. I paid attention to how everyone seemed to react to the sessions, and whether or not it fit the Chess Piece I had found. I obsessed over what would evoke the experience as I saw it. I wanted people to find the same piece I found, and the rules were the map to finding the Chess Piece.

And it worked.

I'm absolutely in awe of that. I honestly don't know what to do with it. No, I didn't make the perfect map to the experience that Crescendo points to, but it works really well. I may need to refine the map over the years, but for the moment I have reached the limit of my talent, and need time to grow, to see if I can make the map better later.

Honestly, I was wondering if I was done with designing after that. I made a bunch of different games, and the playtests for all of them came back really nicely: Dragons and Planets and The Right Thing, particularly. I may still release those, but those are simply refinements and remixes of Crescendo. I don’t find that to be terribly compelling. I can do that kinda thing ad nauseum, but at that point it's just flooding the market with more stuff in the same table milieu. Someone shouldn't be looking at what I make and go "Well, when I have time". I want them to see something legitimately different, which doesn't compete with what they love already, but shows them a new way to do things.

Crescendo is a new way to do things. Heranyt, the science fantasy setting I am making for Crescendo, makes Crescendo weirder, a different thing entirely even from core Crescendo. I am currently toying with the idea of making modern, Western, and sci fi settings for Crescendo, because I think I could fundamentally change the way the game is played, each time.

So when I ask, in the title "Can You Do It Again".... that is what I am asking. Can I be a gardener to Something Else?

The Danger of Principles

I have long been aware of a central problem of life: the solutions you find in life are the source of further problems. You cannot assume that what you found that worked before will work the next time. As you build solutions, you will find that the temptation will be to keep defaulting to what worked before. So long as the square hole has some somewhat rounded edges, you'll go for it.

People who do not understand this have a very hard later lot in life.

Not that I am saying I do this, on reflex. Past solutions being good for present problems is a reflex thing, of your nervous system. 

And man it's tripping me up right now.

The thing that I found I did with stuff like The Right Thing and Dragons and Planets is that I just assumed the things that worked for Crescendo could be ported over to something else.

But that's  refinement, not gardening. It's not finding, discovery, of a new chess piece. Is there a way to do that reliably? I don't know. 

But I'm either flipping the table or quitting. And I have no intention to quit. What will I find when I reach back under the couch?