The MISSING Tools of the Dark Souls RPG

 

The Dark Souls RPG is a lesson in poorly written advice. Had I not read as many RPG rulebooks and theory, I would not have been able to figure it out at all. "Do what you find fun" is some of the worst advice you can put into an RPG book, and is the kind of thing that caused me to overwrite on mine own game, Crescendo. But fear not! I have a way of playing this game that's going to absolutely rock your game table.

The Instruments

Before I show you how to run the session, look over the tools we'll be using: the Encounter List, Encounter Die, and Reaction Rolls. These three tricks and mechanics will allow you to run the Level on the fly, with very little prep work.

The intent behind these mechanics is to push the players into situations that require them to utilize the game to navigate the challenges you made, while helping you populate your Level with stuff that your players care about.

Encounter List

The Encounter List tells you what's wandering your Level. Do not. Do NOT. Try to balance it. Get 20 entries on it, from the lowest shitling monster to the highest terror before God and man you want. This is really a matter of taste. 

If you want to grab something from not the Dark Souls RPG, do so, I don't have any advice on adapting monsters at the moment. If you find something that works, let me know!

Encounter Die

Every turn, roll 1d20: on a 5 or less, an Encounter happens. Roll 1d20 on the Encounter List and plop that creature into the environment, 1d6x10 feet away.

Roll 1d20 for each participant, NPCs/creatures included. If you roll higher than their Passive Perception, then they don't know they're not alone.

Reaction Roll

On meeting an NPC initially, roll 1d20, add the highest Charisma Modifier from the group and uses the initial result on the left.

The players accidentally bump into a boar. The highest Charisma modifier is +3. That player rolls 1d20+3, and his total is 10. The boar is Unfriendly: she's not outright attacking, not yet, but no one better get closer...

1-9: Violent, -3 Steps down this track

10-13: Unfriendly, -2 Steps down this track

14-16: Indifferent, No Steps

17-18: Helpful, but Won't Take Damage, +1 Steps up this track

19-20+: VERY Eager to Help, +2 Steps up this track

If a player tries to talk with the NPC, they narrate what they do. The GM tells them a Skill based off their RP, and they roll using that Skill, and the GM uses the result on the right.

Velkor the Herald tries to soothe the boar, motioning for everyone to slowly start for the exit while he tries to calm the boar down. Velkor's player rolls and gets a total of 17: Helpful, +1 up the track, so now the boar is Indifferent. It's not looking for excuses to go after them. With his other compatriots safely exited, Velkor himself has to make a good exit, so he narrates how he slowly edges his way to the exist, trying to not piss this thing off.  The GM grants that this action should be made with advantage, as he had already calmed the boar down a little bit, and it would make sense that he has an easier time of it now.

Nat 2 and Nat 1. Shit.

Something in the way Velkor was backing out pisses the boar off, and it charges immediately.

The Procedure

The following is a rough skeleton. It is not a straitjacket. Sometimes you'll have an idea that works perfectly, on the spot. Go with that idea! The Procedure is only to help you generate ideas so that way you don't have to think about it too hard. However, if that's not the case, if you're not completely inspired right then and there, use this Procedure, which utilizes the above tools.

Each turn, roll 1d20: on a five or a less, an Encounter happens. Roll 1d20 on your Encounter List, to see what the players bump into.

Roll against each player and NPC's Passive Perception. See what the people "in the know" do.

If  one of the players Randomly pick one player, and roll 1d6: 

1-2: Ask them how their Background factors into the Encounter.

3-4: Ask them how their Memory factors into the Encounter.

5-6: Ask them how their Drive factors into the Encounter

Let the player decide the particulars. Respond to their input.

Roll Reaction rolls as appropriate. Let the dice fall where they may.

If combat trips off, follow the rules in the core book.

Conclusion

These tools will let you navigate your Level in a way that feels appropriately Dark Souls. Next week we'll cover the procedures for generating your own Level, the Five Room Web!

If you have any questions, comment on here or hop over to my Discord Server!

The Dark Souls RPG is Great, Actually

What Do I Mean by Great?

Greatness is a strange thing. It's not "good", or "bad", but a a vision, a singular thing that screeches something positive, new, above its issues and imperfections and problems. Greatness is not perceived via taste, but through spiritual perception, through a previously existing devotion to wholeness and something higher than quality. If something great isn't approached with wholeness, it produces violent reactions, whether it be with hatred, confusion, or a pernicious apathy whose poison isn't obvious to the one experiencing it.

The Dark Souls RPG, adpated from 5e 2014, is a great RPG. Despite its clear mistakes and foibles, it is one of the most singular visions produced in the last ten years of roleplaying games. It actually invents its own kind of table, with its terms planted like a seed in the mind.

Adaptation Isn't 1:1

The first thing to understand is that the Dark Souls RPG is an adaptation. I know, I know, that sounds obvious. But when you talk about something, its intention has to be looked at. 

What's Being Adapted?

The Dark Souls video games features a singular person starting at a checkpoint called a Bonfire and navigating a series of challenges, looking for another Bonfire to rest at. The challenges are almost entirely combat. If you kill the creatures, you get Souls, which is money and XP combined. If you die, you lose your Souls, and have to go reclaim them. If you explore the map more you'll find "Larger" Souls, which will just "hand" you Souls, as reward for your exploration.

When combat starts, your two resources are HP and Stamina. If you do anything other than a simple move of the joystick, Stamina is subtracted. It regenerates when not used. HP is subtracted when you're hit. Estus flasks, Humanity, and visiting Bonfires restores HP.

Items grant different boosts. Weapons particularly are complex, granting different types of animations and therefore tactics.

Someone who knows the videogames better than I can add more to this, but it is a factual statement of the typical experience playing Dark Souls the videogames.

Video Games Can't Be Directly Ported to TTRPGs

This should be obvious, but apparently the discourse around this game seems to have missed this. Video games don't play like TTRPGs.

The fundamental change, beyond the obvious ones of technology, is the social nature of a TTRPG. Dark Souls, by default, is a solitary experience. Notice the wording. I didn't say Dark Souls isn't social, I said Dark Souls is solitary, by default. Sure, you can summon, but that isn't inherent to the experience. The idea is that it is you against the world. Others can help you, but it's up to you.

Most TTRPGs don't work like that. With the exception of solo play, all TTRPGs are inherently social experiences. Even if it's just one player, the presence of a GM inherently changes the experience. This one change means that a ton has to be changed to keep the experience true to the video games, without trying to do something TTRPGs can't do. The mechanics, the experience, has to be changed to a social one..

And in this case, the Dark Souls RPG is a great but flawed translation.

Player-Driven Elements

The oddest thing about the Dark Souls RPG is that it has these player-driven mechanics, encouraging players to get involved in world building and giving GMs an idea of what to put in their levels. It wasn't strictly necessary to do this, but the way they were layered allows a GM to fill his Level, without compromising on his vision for it. It's a tight balance to strike, but the game does it!

There's three elements: Backstory, Memory, and Drive. A player can use them by adding details to their narration, saying why they should get advantage on that particular roll. This allows the players to add plot hooks they want, taking the smaller (and actually more difficult) elements off the GM's plate.

The Backstory is what your character was before death. 

Backgrounds are things like: 

"Failed warlord"

"Faithful knight of the realm"

"Wretched ravager of the hinterlands"

Backgrounds are meant to be a general catch-all, something that the player and the GM can grab at with little difficulty. The Backstory, being so wide, is only given a small boost: you can invoke your Backstory to gain advantage on a saving throw once per Long Rest. It's widely applicable, yet somewhat limited in power.

A Memory is a specific moment from before death that sticks with your character. 

Memories are things like:

"When I wrenched the sword out of my beloved's chest, it snapped at the hilt."

"When the ground fell from below my feet, there was a split second when I knew it and could have reacted."

"I kissed the demon, and it burned me"

The game doesn't give any guidelines on how often you can change your Memory, but there's nothing saying you can't change it.- specifically one thing that stuck out at you from before. It shouldn’t necessarily make sense, because it has been divorced from its context. If you can invoke this Memory, you get advantage on any check of your choice, once per Long Rest. This funnels the player into finding those specific moments and replicating them. That's not going to create problems, nope!

A Drive is why you think you have been brought back.

Drives are things like:

"I am meant to restoring  the King in Yellow to his glory, before he was corrupted."

"I will destroy the Serpent of Col-Foant, releasing his slaves."

"The Queen in White can be saved from herself. I am the one to do it."

All of these character elements have random tables you can roll on for inspiration or stealing, but Drives are the one spot where I think you should probably roll, given that players won't know enough about the Level to feel confident about setting a Drive. However, if you can help your players be confident enough, they can set some wild Drives, giving the GM a lot of ideas for the Level! You can invoke a Drive to reroll a failed check or saving throw. If players are chasing their Drive they get a lot of power, especially if they got advantage on the original roll: that's a powerful reroll!

Character Creation Is Almost Perfect

Character creation is actually very simple: pick an origin ", pick a class, choose some skills, and write everything down on the character sheet.

The origin grants you specific stats and Bloodied Abilities, which turn on when you're at half Position, which is partially your health. These Bloodied Abilities are very important, if not somewhat clunky in some spots, as some increase your stats, which can lead to some awkward mid-encounter changes. You always get more powerful if you get hit hard or sacrifice your own Position, which creates an interesting push and pull in the system. Which means the conversation at the table is impacted.

Notice the shift from solitary to social? We're going to be seeing a lot of that!

The classes, which are based upon the 5th edition of DnD, are also simplified down. You get bonuses from the class at every level. The classes aren't great sources of choice, they just reinforce a particular archetype and get out of the way. There's a good reason for this, and we'll get back to that in "Weapons as Features". The class also gives you your initial loadout of items. If two people pick the same class they will start almost identical, unless they have different origins, but that's unlikely. But, on the other hand, character creation is so fast that it creates a completely different table dynamic. Put a pin in that, too.

Position is Consequential

Instead of having HP and Stamina, the Dark Souls RPG has one meter: Position. This one number abstracts how vulnerable the character is and the amount of resources they have to do cool stuff. You use Position to power your items' special abilities, and it's also your health. 

You can spend Position to:

- Activate a special ability

- Increase your d20 rolls

- Increase your damage rolls

- Increase your speed, up to double

This creates a push and pull inside the system, where you can do some really incredible stuff.... provided you don't get hit. There are, not accidentally, a ton of reach weapons on this game, means that you can do the hit and run tactics of the video games in a tabletop environment, where you run in, poke, and leave.

So mobility and terrain are really important to this game. Like they should be. And if you get hit it hurts, and you feel like an idiot for not setting things up better. Like it should be, coz it's Dark Souls. This system is an unqualified blast to play. It works. I have thrown this at total noobs and they adored it. They understood, after five minutes, what was going on. They set up plans and tactics that other games could only dream about. People, normal people, understand "health as currency". They get it. This is honestly the masterstroke of the whole game. The core systems work beautifully.

Items as Features/Abilities

The decision to give each Item a special ability was inspired. Each item in the game has a special ability, usually requiring some Position expenditure to activate. 

Here's one piece of armor, as an example:

And some weapons:

Some of these abilities are good, some are bad, some are broken, but there is one equalizing force for the whole thing:

The GM is supposed to place all items on the map, ahead of time.

So if the GM doesn't like the ability on  something - and trust me, there are some real stinkers in this book - he doesn't have to put it in. It is his primary business. So, while some of the weapons are just.... not good... at all... enough of them are either good or amazing, to where you can just populate the map with the stuff that does work. Finding new items is based upon the players' ability to solve problems and explore within the world. Getting more special abilities is based upon player ingenuity and curiosity, and that is a good thing. There's also the "extra souls", which flat out grant more Souls, lots of them, that you can also get from exploration. It is a really good set up.

Death Is Fun!

The math in this game does not favor the players. Monster damage is high, their health is their resource for cool stuff, lowering their health faster. So death is always imminent. Fortunately, the fact that you're playing a TTRPG works in Dark Soul's favor. You come back, with your character, with the world reset to how you had found it. In a video game where combat is the only way to play, this can get tiresome and lead to running through challenges. In a TTRPG, however, this works to the players' favor. You are limited by what you can imagine, and given just how crazed the damage in this game can get, you'll want to find another way.

But this doesn't come without consequences. Each time your character comes back, you have to make a Wisdom save or go a little crazier. The more you come back, the harder it gets to not go nuts.

The Open Level

All of this comes together to make a new kind of table: the Open Level. A variation on the Open Table, the Open Level is when the GM makes an enormous and masochistic Dark Souls level, and lets everyone know when he is available to play. The players get some meaningful input thanks to their Backstories, Memories, and Drives, while the GM gets to world-build to his heart's content. Character creation is fast and practically brainless, meaning that guests have very few issues; in fact, the GM just coming to the table with pregens is so easy that it would be a bit silly not to do it. The slippery nature of Dark Souls time means that, until the Level is beaten, that creatures mostly reset, giving although some challenges won't, giving a sense of familiarity and progression. Players can drop in and drop out at their liking. If a new bonfire is discovered, the whole table benefits and doesn't need to have an explanation about why they return to a new warp zone. The players have to track nothing. The GM just marks where the new warp point is. Everyone wins.

There is nothing quite the Dark Souls RPG in the tabletop world. You could argue the Open Table is similar, but in the end nothing allows for the kind of challenge and continuity as the set up of Dark Souls. The table can expand and contract as it needs to. The Level

Problems, Thy Name is Legion

All this is nice. But. Boy, this game has problems. The text barely offers any direction, the items just scream of jank, and the editing is an embarrassment before God and man.

A Problem of Confidence and Direction

The direction on how to run the Dark Souls RPG is garbage. Straight up. Niceisms like "find what works for your group" are rampant throughout the core text. "Don't worry, as long as you're having fun!" What exactly is fun in this case? How is it accomplished? Telling GMs to experiment and see what works is a terrible thing to say, and the Dark Souls RPG says it all the time. If this was my first RPG I'd be incredibly lost and hate this thing.

And, because the text is so poorly edited, its detractors can rightfully claim that the game is unrunnable. What's clearly the barebones layout for a sandbox campaign can be safely ignored by the railroading "theatre kids", who claim that Dark Souls doesn't support a "story". Given that the bare amount of direction that is given very clearly indicates a sandbox for anyone who has played one, you can safely fill in the gaps. But if you haven't? Or if you want a "story"? This book isn't just useless, it doesn't indicate what to do well enough.

A Problem of Jank

Some of this game is just.... weird. The item abilities in the book clearly needed another pass, as some are absolutely unusable. This problem is mitigated by the way the game works, but that doesn't make it not a problem. You can compare these abilities and easily figure it out, but the sheer frustration of so many abilities being badly done can get almost unbearable at times.

The good news is that, if you know the video game, it's not too hard to fix these abilities. But if you don't? How on earth would you know what to do? And let's  be honest, why should you have to, because if they had done their jobs this wouldn't be a problem in the first place!

A Problem of Editing

The first printing of this game is an absolute nightmare. An utter nightmare. The furor around the initial release of this game was absolutely justified. Steamforged fixed the typos and obvious screw-ups... after having their customers email them what to fix. And even then, the newer print run is still poorly edited. It was a scummy move.

In the End, Does it Matter?

And yes, I gave them my money. Willingly. The book, now, is usable. It could be better, but it is quite functional. It's not difficult for me to figure out where they went wrong. It doesn't take more than a few minutes of reading anything about an open table to fill in the gaps and realize what can be done with this game, right out of the box. 

New ideas in tabletop are hard to come by. Dark Souls, as a concept, was new to video games. Translated faithfully, it should be new to TTRPGs. And the designers nailed that part. This plays exactly how it needs to, and recreates the jolly cooperation of the video games in a way adapted to tabletop. Heck, I'd argue there's an entirely new genre of TTRPGs here, or a subgenre at the very least. The idea is so good that it can overcome even the sloppiest of edits, the most predatory of practices.

This is a great idea. A great game. It deserves to be played. It deserves to revolutionize the space of TTRPGs.

Who Are You?

Freaking Watch Arcane Workshop Already

If you aren’t watching Arcane Workshop, you are doing it wrong. Just objectively. It’s some of the most (if not the most) vulnerable commentary on gaming one can ask for. The channel is a testament to gaming as art. In his most recent video, “Why Bother With Videogames?”, Arcane gives his best swing at answering the question in the title. It’s a moving video. That’s no surprise, Arcane has a way of showing the River Styx moving through him. By the time I had a realization, and hated what it said about me. 

Gaming is a kind of an examination conscience. 

What’s an Examination of Conscience?

An examination of conscience is a tool, usually religious, where you try to suss out who you are. Classically this means a list of actions that are bad. You go through, check off the deeds you have done, and are meant to use it in working on yourself. 

In general, I hate them. 

Why?

Because, whether I like it or not. I am a cultural Protestant. Instead of finding  meaning everywhere, using texts to help guide the process… I use the text to define who I am. And this is a very bad thing to do. It doesn’t matter if it’s the Bible, an examination of conscience, or the newest YouTube video from Arcane Workshop, using a “text” to define you is a horrible idea. And I simply can’t get over it with those damn lists of actions. 

So how is a game an examination of conscience? C’mon, listen to Arcane talk! He is responding honestly to what he plays. He is moved, and moved people are honest to themselves. And that’s the point of an examination of conscience. He reacts to something in the world outside of him and realizes that says something about him.

So How Do I Stack Up?

Now, my chief game media is TTRPGs. What happens when I look at how I act? When I play, I am trouble. I pick fights with my GM, sometimes I get weirdly depressed and just skip sessions for reasons I don’t understand. When I am there I am there for maximum conflict, regardless of whether that’s in or out of game. I have literally flipped tables and walked out. 

Don’t I sound lovely? Admittedly, I have toned down significantly in recent years. But that edge “Fuck around find out” hasn’t worn off. So overall a lovely individual in all ways.

When I GM I can get strangely timid. I become conscious of everyone else at the table, sometimes too much, and may hold off on enacting evil plans until I am confident I will be well-received. Once I am confident, however? I can put you through Hell and make you grateful for the experience. Once confident the darkly twisted half of my personality comes out and asks questions that turn the Geneva Conventions into a checklist. I figure out where my players can enjoy the black of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”… only to be extremely anxious afterwards that, once again, I overdid it. 

Don’t ask about video games. I literally still throw controllers at 37. Real mature, I know. 

Board games I am at my most honest when I am burning down the whole board, especially if I am in the middle of the conflagration. I generally enjoy taking hits on the chin and making it worse for the guy who hit me. If it’s a coop game I generally lead, although in a snarky “Let me clean up your mess” sort of a way. 

Bad as this sounds… this is all an improvement. There’s a lot of kindness I have gained. My brother has commented that I am now a very good teacher. He’s seen me sabotage my own efforts in order to teach others how to play well. Surprised, I told him I wanted others to be able to play with me. His response? “That wasn’t there before your children. Not like how it is now.” He and I enjoy friendly bouts Dice Throne whenever we see each other, and it’s a lovely time. 

Now, the temptation is to let this process be definitive. Cultural Protestantism, best summed up by the conservative Justices of the American Supreme Court, simply wants the page to define reality. There is a growing revulsion to this corrupt idea of law, and for good reason! What is on the page is only there so we can make sure some things in life remain clear, that wouldn’t be otherwise.  That’s it. If the examination isn’t to put me in a straitjacket, what is it for?

So that I know what areas of my soul need to find something to love. 

Changing Your Perception

Let me explain. 

The Greek word for repentance is metanoia - changing how your "third eye" sees things. Given that everyone, from time immemorial, has known that perception is belief applied in the real world, it means changing what you are looking for. Because your mind can only make decisions on what is fed to it. What is vital to understand is that repentance is not something where you go "Oh, I'm doing this wrong". That way just makes you perseverate and is the opposite of what's intended.

Instead, it's meant to help you understand that you can find more light. More warmth. More love. That you have a greater capacity for beauty and truth than you know. Doing "good" isn't a case of making some cold and abstract resolution that will never pay off in more light and warmth. Instead, find things that fill you with light and warmth, and watch as that radiates through you. 

This is not an easy thing to do. Your brain will get in the way. Light and warmth, the real stuff, defies time, space, logic, reason, all these things that you think define the world. They don't. I say this from really harsh experience. Light and warmth that you can't accept burns, and you have to figure out how to accept it.

The battle is not over whether you or doing the right thing or not. It is realizing that you can let more warmth and light flow through you. An examination of conscience helps you figure out where you might focus on.

And gaming is a great way to do that.

Andor is Moving and Conflicted

 

I am deeply divided on Andor. The hype around it automatically made me suspicious and prejudiced against it. The hype grew, my suspicions deepened. 

The first three episodes were so bad that I didn’t bother investigating further. 

We can blame the following blog post on my brother. My brother does not ask much of me. He is a generally the Huck Finn to my Tom Sawyer, quietly observing as I fly into the clouds and stay there a good long time. And, at one point, he told me he adored Andor. My brother is not a man to mince words, nor one who follows trends. He is one of the very few people I have met who forms genuine opinions.  So, if something moves him, I shut up and pay attention. When I told him the first three episodes sucked, he agreed they were rough, but to skip them. 

Did I listen? Of course not! I am stubborn! I tried starting again at the first three episodes again. What a surprise, I hated them! Badly structured with way too much yellow crap.

At some point I laughed at my stupidity and did what my brother suggested. And I really like the first season! I have three caveats, three pieces of context to refer back to before reading my thoughts on the first season of Andor.

Caveat the first: Star Wars is music expressed as a story. This is not up for debate, it is not a question worth arguing over. You listen to the music, let the images link up to it in your head, and use the dialogue to contextualize the music and images. That's how George did it and it's what Lucasfilm under Disney continues to do. If you disagree with this point nothing I am about to say will make sense to you. So, if you get lost, come back here and read this paragraph again.

Caveat the second: Star Wars is irrevocably Arthurian. And the Arthurian ideal, best expressed in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is that of the noble failure, where one can't win, but goes down swinging as hard as one can. The green claims you after you have worn your body out past death. Nobility is not in succeeding, but in preferring death rather than giving your foe what he wants.

The Force is simply Arthurian logic given power. Luke's triumphs in the OT are born from the Arthurian ideal given actuality. From blowing up to the first Death Star to sparing Vader to providing an escape path to the Resistance, Luke's successes are the noble failure par excellance. If you're trying to figure out who Luke is, look no further than Gawain of Camelot. 

But, no matter what happens, eventually you will fail. Like Frodo at Mount Doom, eventually you will be unable to resist. So fight until the green reclaims your bones! The rest of us get a green armband, because if only we could fail like Gawain!

The last caveat before I actually get to the point. I think Lucasfilm has a lot more creative control than most people think. So, when I watch anything Star Wars, I assume the other stuff matters. If it's released, it's meant to line up with everything else on a thematic level. Different works emphasize different thematic elements. You get a mosaic of experiences of mortals grappling with the central truth: death is preferable to giving in to what evil wants.

So, when they're charging the lines and shouting "Freedom!" I cheer because, for just one moment, everyone threw off their fear before it all came crashing down. The First Order is going to happen, folks! The next generation doesn't stick the landing, because as it turns out the house always wins, because the house doesn't play fair, and the next generation forgot. Because they always forget.

No, that's not subtext in Andor, it's literally shown right here:

Congratulations on resisting, the Empire is way ahead of you. It always is. The house always wins. You are not winning; you are choosing a way of life. You are choosing how you will die. No more. No less. 

And if you don't want to do this? If you don't want to resist the downward inner pull of the universe?

I assure you Luke pulls it off better than you. He bounced back five years after losing a dozen foster children, which is a superhuman act of fortitude. Don't like it? For the love of God avoid couples who miscarried. You may not be able to handle the sheer amount of inevitable soul rust. 

All the caveats aside. What do I think of Andor itself, not to mention its nearly universal acclaim as the new Star Wars hotness? Andor is a brilliant but unoriginal Star Wars show. It deserves high praise, but not the kind of acclaim it’s given. In reality, Andor has some deep flaws that result from the stupidity of the streaming model, which also simultaneously makes the story possible. 

Andor’s writing is brilliant. No one should be arguing this. The scope of  “We’re doing this on purpose” is beyond obvious. The plot is a perfectly crafted slowburn, filled with thematic showcases that only look like digressions. It isn’t Monster levels of brilliance, but anyone pulling off theme-as-plot is doing something incredible. Time and again, Andor stops to breathe. To process. To let you think about what you just saw. It can take a minute to get used to, but Andor pays off its promises every time. 

The real protagonist and true brilliance of Andor is Luthen Rael, the man who must make it all stop.  Stellan Skarsgard elevates the practically-perfect material written for him with an inspired performance. Luthen wields his grief as a dagger in the dark, for the benefit of others… assuming he doesn’t stab them In the back. Luthen is dangerous, unpredictable, with the right mix of actual masculinity and vulnerability to make him sympathetic. He is the broken heart of Andor. 

Arguably the show lets lightning strike twice by making the second-most boring character in Rogue One compelling: Cassian Andor. The show does a convincing progression, from selfish thief to conflicted hero. Diego Luna really pours himself into Cassian, showing as the walls around his soul crack, break, and collapse. I didn’t expect to give a shit about Cassian at the beginning of the show. The fact I do relatively quickly is a testament to the quality of the writing and acting. 

Unfortunately, that’s about where the brilliance stops. The rest of the characters are basically tools to advance the plot except for brief shining moments. Bix particularly suffers from writing that in any other show would be called out as chauvinistic, but the titillation of a brutal rape attempt is just too much to pass up. Mon Mothma almost hits brilliance (incredible speech aside!), but keeps getting sidelined. It’s a frustrating thing to witness all around, given how on fire this cast is. I understand they were cut short, and to a degree I even approve. But don’t introduce pieces you’re not going to move around! The stuff they do pull off is amazing, however! However. Andor doesn’t quite deserve the praise it gets. Aside from Luthen, these themes of “What are you willing to give up to keep everything going?” have been done a lot in Star Wars, and sometimes much better. Clone Wars and Tales of the Jedi does far more realistic (and useful) political commentary. Rebels has a much better supporting cast and overall writing. It’s not that Andor doesn’t have the best moments in Star Wars: “One way out” is, objectively, simply the most Star Wars thing ever. Period. It’s that other shows are more evenly constructed all around. I would prefer to rewatch Rebels (and am doing just that), because of the wider tonal range and cast of characters. 

And honestly? Andor is hampered by being connected to Rogue One. I am of the mind that, as the cultural zeitgeist changes, people will finally be allowed to see just how mediocre a film Rogue One really is. And returning to it after Andor only exacerbates the problems of Rogue One. All the characters except Chirrut and Saw are just… there. The plot moves because it’s supposed to move. It’s quite obvious Gilroy improved meteorically on Andor, and good for him, but it makes Rogue One look worse. I think it was a mistake to openly link the two. 

Andor has the single best moments in Star Wars. Period. Luthen is a breath of fresh air. Its uneven treatment of characters and plot, however, hamper it. As good as this show is, as beautiful as its moments, there is a reason why the streaming model doesn’t work. But at least we got this gem before the end. 

Sinners Is Beautiful Propaganda. Go Back to Sleep

 

"Racism: the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another"

- Oxford Dictionary

Sinners has some of the most beautiful moments I've seen in a movie. The mythology is interesting, the acting is amazing, the music moving, and the script is tight and effective. It's also one of the most overtly racist pieces of propaganda I've seen in a long time, giving me the kind of vibes that Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft give off in their short stories. Except, you know, Howard was arguably trying to show racism, as opposed to approving of it. Lovecraft was rather proud of his racism at the time, so that's not an argument. Unfortunately, Coogler seems unaware of the irony, not to mention even the most basic facts of history, relying upon bargain-bin corporate narratives I could find on Reddit. And that goes double for his half-assed take on Christianity. What results is one of the most conflicting movies I've seen in a long time.

Pound for pound, this is one of the sincerest movies I've seen in a long time. This is very clearly a passion project for Coogler, and that's always a good thing to see coming out of Hollywood's machine. Soul is always invigorating, even if it's serving someone's agenda. And this movie has a lot of it. There's a theme of breaking past divides, even if it's momentary, and I want to remark on that and say I see this and I love it. The ending scenes pull all this together, and although it isn't perfect, it exists and that's a pretty cool thing to see pulled off.

The mythology and worldbuilding of Sinners is really cool. Vampires are adapted to a pseudo hive-mind, where absorbing blood exposes everyone so victimized to everyone's culture and memories within the collective. It is an amazing idea! I love it! I'm stealing it for my game nights! I'm honestly surprised that it hasn't been done before, considering that blood is life and the "container" of the soul. I hope this idea sticks around. The concept of stealing culture and weaponizing it is compelling.

If Michael B. Jordan doesn't get an Oscar for this movie he will be robbed. Full stop. It's not that I doubted Jordan's ability to act before, but the sheer craft on display is nothing short of astounding. I can see why they color-coded the twins to red and blue, but I didn't need it. Jordan makes the twins Smoke and Stack so distinctive that the colors are superfluous. The rest of the cast also give career-defining performances. All hands are on deck! Everyone's giving 100%! Whatever my issues with Coogler, he clearly knows how to get everyone invested, pulling the very best out of his folks.

And the music. Folks, the music. There's really lovely stuff composed and adapted for this movie. The movie shows the emotion that created the music. I am a sucker for this kinda thing. Music suffuses the narrative, gives it weight and wings simultaneously. It's hard to screw up a movie with a halfway decent soundtrack and this is an inspired soundtrack.

Movies are about spectacle. Always. You can layer good ideas under them, but ultimately it is image that's at the center of cinema. And the script delivers these beautifully rendered moments, where images show raw beauty. And the writing knows this, steering us into moments where it's simply image. It's what movie writing should be. It knows what it should do. I want to see more writing like this.

But. And man, I hate to say this. But.

Racist is racist, no matter who says it.

I think we can all agree that H.P. Lovecraft is unequivocally and totally racist. Dude's work reeks of it. He admits it and apparently renounced it later on as a "juvenile stunt". Part of what makes Lovecraft's works work is the utter disgust of "the other". The emotion of disgust is so strong in Lovecraft's works that you can't help but feel connected to it. Howard does this in Conan and Solomon Kane and his other works so strongly that people are of the mind that he's racist. I do not think Howard was, certainly not in the way that Lovecraft was. Howard could and did write from a multitude of races and owned their viewpoints. He simply showed what's true: for most of human history, folks classify each other by their ethnicity. Lovecraft didn't do that. The disgust went one way: from him into his stories. There's a reason I don't usually read his stuff and think he's actually extremely overrated.

Circling back to the definition up top, I don’t think it’s right. It’s correct, but that doesn’t make it right. I say this because, over the years, I have gotten to witness a lot of disgust, first hand. My wife’s utter disgust of roaches is utterly indistinguishable from the looks I have seen thrown at my black friends for the smallest of transgressions. 

Racism is when you think of an ethnicity like my wife thinks of roaches. 

Here’s the problem. 

There's not a frame of this movie that doesn't show the same utter disgust for that most recent of American "ethnicities": “white folks”. I put that in quotes, because the instant you leave the U.S. and tell an Irishman he's English (or if he's in the U.S. and are stupid) you will get your ass beat. In fact, try telling a Slovak he's Russian. Go ahead. Do it. I'll be hiding somewhere else. There’s whole “white” ethnicities that would gladly beat you within an inch of your life if you tried that on them. 

And if this distinction, that of corporate parasitism, was actually made in the movie, man that would have been brilliant! I would have loved that! Hive-mind vampires standing in for corporatism? Absolutely! But the movie’s main climax is Elijah shooting all the Klan folks in gloriously captured gore. After watching all the vampires infected by a “white man” burn alive. So no. They just mean “white folks”. The fact that I could swap out Lovecraft’s racist rants in his over bloated, cowardly, and almost entirely reprehensible “fiction” for what Coogler does here and the tone wouldn’t shift a bit is totally lost on him. 

But Coogler doesn’t stop there. He gets dumber. 

As a brief (and necessary) aside, I am from that generation of Catholics raised in an era where “dialogue” with the modern world was encouraged. “There’s common ground, find it!” was the cry. “Don’t shrink from the world, engage!” Most people I know took that adage to mean we should live and let live. Liberalism wasn’t inherently anti-Christian, these people believe in reason! And don’t we hold that the Son of God is named Logos? Which we mistranslate to “logic” and “reason”? We were taught that the frequent anti-Christian nonsense in most modern films was meant well, it was simply ignorance. But, deep down; their reason was our Logos. We could talk them into changing their minds. 

But that attitude is bullshit. 

The liberals’ “reason” and our Logos aren’t the same thing. At all.

I say all this because this film is quite openly anti-Christian. And I simply refuse to give it a pass for it. From the usual stupidity of calling Christianity a white man’s form of oppression - when Ethiopian Christianity was the longest running Christian civilization ever, outstripping Constantinople by hundreds of years - to having the vampires recite the Our Father, to the talisman working right after that… 

No. 

Simply. No. 

This is History 101, folks.  Only a rank ideologue could miss it. That and/or a corporate stooge. 

Totally unrelated, here’s some of the Amazon “X-Ray” extras. 

A giant corporation put that on their website, when it profits from us doing the very opposite of what’s on that screenshot. This is text, folks, this is what Coogler means. And Amazon, Coogler’s vampires writ large, allowed this on their website. 

There are three ways corporations allow something honest to be made: it renders the masses more pliable, it slips their notice, or someone made an exception from love. This isn’t really a movie about love and Amazon puts the message of the movie - which should scare them shitless - right front and center. 

Oh, wait, anger without effective methods turns into resentment, which then turns into apathy. Which then solidifies power structures. The anger was rendered useless. 

Did you end the movie wanting to invest your time in more local endeavors? Pick up music? Learn how to take pride in your own creations? No? 

Did it even occur to you to do so?

Crescendo: What Happens After?

I have been making a game about becoming a legendary hero for a while now. It’s mostly based off the works of Gene Wolfe,  because I think Wolfe is objectively correct about what a hero is: 

a person who can only do what he believes, no more and no less. 

This creates tumult as the world changes in response. 

What Wolfe understands better than anyone, however, is that being a hero is a transitional moment. At some point you become different. The world which you forced your will on adapts to your ways. Your actions, rather than being disruptive, are expected. Instead of being a hero, you are now a revered part of the establishment. Others build their ponzi schemes off you and move on. 

So what do you become in that new world that you made? A teacher? A scholar? An archmage? A king? Whatever it is, it isn’t a hero, because you fit with the world. Stagnation becomes a possibility, as the worst enemy of all rears its sweet head: comfort. 

Frequently you just die. Let’s see what happened to all the heroes post-Iliad, shall we…? Oh, right. Menelaus and Helen are okay. Odysseus gets ten years of journeys and a brief time with Penelope before his son by Circe kills him.

I think that’s it? 

Pretty much everyone else is a suicide or some form of horrifying death. Agamemnon gets boiled alive, and good riddance to him! One of the Ajaxes commits suicide, driven mad by the gods. Poseidon gets a bunch of them. The Age of Heroes ends with a whimper, not a bang. 

And let’s not even get started on Arthur and his knights. Gawain, the best one of them, can’t face death without flinching, unlike the woman he accidentally kills. The cyclical nature of reality is preserved 

Why do we ignore such a basic fact? Fiction is always a summation of belief, not a flight from it. So why do we assume that there is some linear process whereby the hero of the day is happy and well-adjusted tomorrow, nevermind remaining the hero?

Crescendo answers this question by ending the story before heroes have become legends in the setting. It is randomly determined what great deeds they accomplish. We determine how they remake the world so they may live in it comfortably. And then we end the game. We know what our long process has created, without betraying what the game is. We say goodbye before our heroes fall in love with spaceships or assassin redheads or something equally silly. And then we move on.

Heroism isn’t a a destination. It’s a bloody and tumultuous process with an ending. You don’t fit with the world, so you make the world capable of accepting you, however that shakes out. It is a fight for spiritual survival. And then, most of the time, if you have any conscience at all, you stop as soon as you can. 

Creating Roleplaying Opportunities

The other week I played DCC for the first time. It was a blast. I had a wonderful time. Three of my level zero wusses died in the first session, in hilariously awful ways. Blood was flowing, we were solving puzzles and trying to survive... and boy was I failing. But I noticed something while we were having a great time: we weren't really roleplaying, as I had come to understand it. Again, I had a blast! I was engaged! But it wasn't like we were truly RPing.

This isn't a complaint. It's more of a meditation. A processing. Please keep something in mind: I have been playing either Burning Wheel or Crescendo constantly for going on... ten years? I have been steeped in very deep, narration-heavy, roleplaying for a very long time. I don't say that as a boast. It's a fact of my life, and in order for this post to make sense, you have to know that.

Now, I am a firm believer that systems influence people. I think it's possible to encourage people into roleplaying more, into any system, with just a few modifications. After thinking about it, here's what I thought of:

Whenever possible, hook mechanics into roleplaying.

You can't make a fictional world in an RPG without the rules the players agreed to. Throwing the rules out actually makes the world incomplete. I've found that the more you bring the rules into roleplaying itself, the better the roleplaying itself is.

Hold any possible skepticism for the moment. Here's some ideas on how you do it. 

Use Their Player Classes/Archetypes/Backgrounds to Describe Scenes

Whenever you're done describing a scene, ask each player to add a detail that would interest their someone of their class, archetype, or background. Let the players add to the scene. Let them help you tie the noose.

Players Must Justify Success

If a player doesn't narrate why they should succeed in their action... they don't. It's not "Roll for it", it's "No". That simple. 

Rolling comes up, generally speaking, if the GM feels that the plan given by the player might be plausible. This one little rule will almost entirely do the trick, just on its own. If you require actual narration, with an attempt to solve the problem before them, players will do it. 

Justify Advantage When Rolling

Rolling should never be neutral. Either the player has justified having advantage on the roll or they get disadvantage. 

This comes down to system choice, of course, but the general mechanics of most RPGs can be fit to this rule pretty easily. This rule keeps the player engaged in the fiction, even as they pick up the dice. It's a small trick, but it keeps the flow of narration going. Be more merciful than not. Rolls are usually instigated by the GM, not the player, so if you're forcing a player to fend for themselves and then not be terribly lenient about them responding it's actually going to kill engagement. Let the players feel like they're rising to the occasion.

Let Them Narrate the Loss of HP

Or whatever negative stuff you have in your game. If something happens to the character (like gaining Stress, losing HP, gaining Conditions), ask them what that looks like for their character. Players naturally want to use the system to describe their characters. Let them! They'll invest if you let them do it.

Conclusion

The idea that the fictional world is complete without the rules of the game doesn't really work, because it doesn't. You aren't just playing make-believe, you are using a ruleset to guide make-believe. Bringing the rules into the fiction, to make it an aspect of roleplaying, makes the overall experience more cohesive. The rules are in the world. You bring the rules in, and the loop is complete.

Eating Crow: Rippaverse

On a basic level, I get being anti-woke. I hate performative empathy, toxic positivity, and offensively shallow Marxism as much as the next person with a brain. Yes, woke still exists. Yes, it's still bad. No, it’s not anymore “caring about people” than sticking someone in a Soviet camp.

At anytime someone of less reading comprehension than my seven year old gets lost, refer to the above paragraph.

In 2020/21 I would say I was a fan of Eric July’s content. He seemed to have some strong common sense, without being driven by the insane rage that had taken over so many. He was pleasant and snarky, without being a jerk  

So when he announced he was going to start his own comic book company, Rippaverse, I was excited! Sure! I would need to see proof of concept and whatnot, but as a general idea? Absolutely! I wanted to see what he had to offer. 

I have written reviews on three Rippaverse comics: Isom 1, Isom 1 and 2, and Alphacore. I was generally positive about the three books and handled Isom 1 and 2 the way I would want someone to handle my first written works: as trailers for what they may accomplish. Alphacore isn’t the best thing Chuck Dixon ever wrote, and its art is atrocious, but overall, I liked it. Overall, strong enough to keep me buying. Not the best stuff I had ever read, but I thought it had potential.

Then Yaira 1 came out. 

And then Goodying. 

Holy crap, did I hate those books. The art issues that plagued the first three (particularly Alphacore) were even worse than before. The art was just flat out bad. The plots clearly needed another pass or five before being sent to the penciller. 

Yaira suffered from having too much stuffed into it. There's all these ideas that, on paper, are really good, but they don't interact very well with each other, not in 90 pages. 300? Sure. 90? Absolutely not. The plot doesn't breathe, so it all felt incoherent. And, once again, the art is just... it's a hodge podge of crap. I hate saying it, because it's very clear everyone is rushed. If you can't deliver a good product on time, delay. The story and art are what matter! Saying "Oh, we're on time" is not enough. 

Goodying was bland. Flat out bland. Again, there's good ideas in the text. Goodying being a stoic is a cool idea! Goodying as a character was easily my favorite in Isom 1, and I loved the things revealed about him. But the plot is just flat out bad. It's not serviceable. It's not even mediocre. It's bad. The characters stay static, and the plot just doesn't... do anything. Nothing. It's just there. There's characters I do actually want to see have an adventure, and it's boring to read about them. And that's unforgiveable in a story.

These are just outright bad books. Defending them sounds like a wife with a black eye saying they tripped down the stairs. I wish it wasn't so! But they're so cookie cutter. So corporate. Rippaverse's stuff reads like the kind of corporate shlock I hate Marvel for, but it's supposed to be some scrappy indie company. I take offense at that. 

A splash of cold water across the face. Two, really. That's what Yaira 1 and Goodying were. The problem was that my hatred became retroactive. No longer was I as generous with Isom or Alphacore. They stopped looking like birthing pains and became a “If someone tells you who they are, listen” situation. It’s one thing if you’re figuring out your craft, but this started to look like someone loving the smell of their own farts. 

Unfortunately, July has clarified that for me via his Iliad-length Twitter (it will NEVER be X) posts. Here's part of one.

C’mon, folks, that’s just cringe incarnate.

So. 

Here’s the deal. 

July’s stable of crap is soulless. I can hear the squeaky squeak of the pen in the checkboxes. Once is your first time, sure. I get it. Writing is legitimately hard. You gotta figure out how to structure your ideas to put some soul in, that makes sense. Five times, three of them from other creators, is on purpose. The line just feels so bland and mediocre. Much as I hate 99% of Marvel these days, at least they have the grace to be bad. Bad is clear. Bad is easy. So is good. But mediocre? Get out. 

The problem is that most of the “anti-mainstream” is like this. They have checklists of what they think are in good stories, like it's a form. Like somehow, some way, they can just connect the dots. 

You know who else talks like that? Corporations.

I'm disappointed. I wanted Rippaverse to be good. I really did. But this just isn't it. I spent my hard-earned cash on books that were, at best, mediocre. And considering that I can't seem to find an honest review of any Rippaverse stuff, or even anyone actually talking about it in general, I can't even ascertain if any future books are worth my time or not. 

And that tells me a lot.

RE: The Death of Meaning, "Keep Your Forked Tongue Behind Your Teeth"

This is a rant. It's hopefully a useful rant. But it is a rant. You are forewarned.

What's Pissed Me Off

The anti-woke (referred to from here on out as Grimas) crowd have been getting on my nerves for years. From their silly inability to understand basic plot points in movies to completely missing the point of stories to just hating everyone and everything that isn't 20+ years old... let's just say I haven't been a fan. My annoyance turns to anger, however, when they start making the ridiculous claim that somehow they're guarding something bigger and important than their own childishness. In so doing, they entertain the delusion that their silliness is related to people with any principles, at all. 

Like this nonsense from Man of Ages, "The Death of Meaning"

Now, the lefties have gotten good at pointing this lack of any meaningful principles out. They point out (correctly) that the "anti-woke" miss basic touchstones of reality, that they're juvenile, and overall extremely unpleasant people. This is all legit. But where they mess up is the idea that the "anti-woke" are true representations of what they think of as the "Dark Ages" they have left behind. Crap like "The Death of Meaning" is something they can successfully strawman into supporting their position, because look at dumb the opposition is! And I just sigh and roll my eyes and ignore it as best I can but look at this embarrassingly stupid mess.

The problem, like any with other "conservative", is that Ages doesn't check his own assumptions enough. He doesn't sit down and ask why he's angry. Does he keep pushing until he's drilled down to his own assumptions, examined them, and comes to an actual understanding in the post? Nope. And it starts literally in the first sentence.

"Fantasy and science fiction are not mere escapism."

Excuse me? How are we wrong right here, at the beginning? 

"Mere"? 

Escapism, real escapism, is as virtuous as it gets. The "real world" can get really confusing and disheartening. Certain things about the "real" world confuse our ability to do good for us and others. If you mentally stay in that situation, you're only going to get more and more confused and wind up leaving the real world for something in your head. 

Escapism, at its core, is about getting your head free of what you think the real is. You pull yourself out, remind yourself of what's true and good and beautiful, no matter what, and then you get back on the horse. You get your head clear and then go forward.  Tolkien and Le Guin call escapism virtuous. We should be too. To start the post in this kind of a negative way is to fail to understand the very positive, very good, very real thing you're actually doing when you escape.

Let's see how the tree grows, given the roots are rotten.

"...the mythic mirrors we hold up to reality."

Okay, what the hell does this mean? The second sentence, and this guy writes the word "mythic", as if we're going to just nod along. But seriously: what the hell does "mythic" mean? Really? I go to Google, type in that word, and get:

- relating to or resembling myth.

"we explain spiritual forces in mythic language"

- exaggerated or idealized.

"he was a national hero of mythic proportions"

That is useless. Functionally useless. I go and Google mythology and get:

1. a collection of myths, especially one belonging to a particular religious or cultural tradition.

"a book discussing Jewish and Christian mythologies"

Similar: myth(s) legend(s) folklore folk tales folk stories lore tradition stories tales mythos

2. the study of myths.

"this field includes archaeology, comparative mythology, and folklore"

That is, again, functionally useless! That doesn't tell us what is different about the tales in their form and content! Ages is essentially relying upon vibes to get us to skate over a glaring hole in his opening statement. He wants you to just nod along without actually saying anything of substance. You know how difficult it actually is to get a working definition of myth, one which accurately describes a myth's point and purpose? I've actually found it frustrating. Because nothing in that paragraph is unique to mythology.

So far, we're two sentences in and all we've gotten are vague vibes. Vibes aren't enough.

It gets worse.

"Science fiction, in particular, has functioned as a prophecy machine—warning us of futures we might still avoid."

Say it with me: science fiction is always about what's going on right now. Classically speaking, prophets are not those saying, "This will happen" but "This is what's currently happening, and this is where it'll get us." Ages, by bungling this very basic point, completely misunderstands the point of 1984 and all science fiction. I was hearing this crap in my Catholic homeschooled middle school groups. I don't have to be an atheist to call it false and find it repulsive.

"I remember a time when players would stalk their GMs, begging for another session. "

I don't remember that time, I'm living it right now! I have children! They love playing with me! Every session is precious to them, they want to do it over and over and over and over again, to the point where if I let them all they would do are RPGs.

And Dice Throne

And Pokemon TCG

And the Star Wars Unlimited TCG

And I have a fantastic time with them, and I hope someday they understand just how much their joy saved me from apathy. I remember when I lost that zest for life, and then it kept dying. And dying. What you're talking about are the rosy-eyed glasses of nostalgia. 

I have played many a session in my adulthood that was truly meaningful and beautiful. But it can't come naturally anymore, because adults have spent decades rotting away and must search out what they once had. They have to own it in a completely different way and be comfortable with the ambiguity of missing it.

"When we lived and breathed adventure, when missing a game felt like missing a chapter of history. Not because the DM was a literary genius, but because the world had meaning."

Because you were younger and therefore didn't have to look for meaning, it just came to you. You're absolutely correct that the world isn't as bright and sparkly as it was a few decades ago. But frankly, that has less to do with game systems than you. The older you get, the less meaning is handed to you and the harder you have to look. But what you find is yours in a way that was never a part of childhood.

Why It Pissed Me Off

All anger is a defense mechanism. Something valuable is threatened and so therefore you rise up in defense. But in order to defend something, you have to know what it is you're defending. And that means going back to basics, re-examining what and why you believe what you do. If you don't do this you just flail, uselessly, and look like an idiot.

The leftists, wokies, whatever you want to call them, did me a huge favor. By so fundamentally challenging so many assumptions, all at once, I had to go and drill down to the bottom of what and why I believed what I did. What I found changed me for the better and allowed me to start taking a journey that has made my life so much better. What I have discovered is so much more than stupid little pithy one-liners than our "cultural heritage". It's a completely different world.  A world that's bigger, more beautiful, scarier, requires more, from me than I ever thought possible. It has helped me heal and feel things that I never thought I would, ever again. 

So how could I ever hate those that pushed me along the path? That's insanity. I can't hate the events that made me, however horrifying that may be at times.

No, the thing that I hate is that a conversation with those people is impossible, because idiots, second-rate hacks, frauds like Ages loudly bray about "muH CUlchsuRE" and "VAluEs", the end products of an experience, as if they were the only thing worth talking about. It's reductive and is far more insulting to me than anyone who has had a difference experience. Different experiences can be compared, empathized with, and maybe we'll both get something out of it. I really hope that sort of thing can happen!

But these fools, who muddy the waters?

They deserve little more than "Please stop."

And that really is it.

Design Journal: Crescendo is Negative Design

I had a "Eureka!" moment the other day, and wanted to share it with y'all. I'm going to use two terms: Positive Game Design and Negative Game Design. The blog post will be about I went from trying Positive Game Design to where I'm at now, Negative Game Design, and why I'm satisfied with where I wound up for Crescendo.

Before the definitions, however, understand that my general goal in design is to be mechanically invisible during play. This doesn't mean there aren't rules. Crescendo's actually a fairly heavy game, filled with a lot of crunchy bits that would take awhile for people to learn. I want my designs to fuse mechanics and fiction in a way that makes you forget they're mechanics in the first place. It goes from "what does this thing do" to "what's the consequences in the fiction?" and then looking to the rules automatically, without breaking the flow of being in a fictional world with your friends. I think this is generally what people are trying to accomplish in the rules-lite genre, but I don't think that works. We'll get to why in another post, but it's necessary to know I feel that way.

Positive Design is very simple: whatever you want the players to do, reward them for doing it! You want people to get money? Link gold, the highest form of currency, to XP. Now players will chase the gold, because that will help them level up. You want players to do something, you give them a carrot. There's no stick inherently in the set up. Maybe there's something like HP that makes you want to be careful, because when your HP is gone your character is dead and you can't get gold. Moves from the PBTA games are another example of positive design. "Do X, you trigger a Move", with a pretty generous canon on whether you succeed or not. People sort of like rolling dice in an RPG (put a pin in this for later), so if they do the triggers they get to roll dice! Yay! Do a thing, get a thing. Positive Design is good because it's simple! You know what to do! Go get gold! Or go trigger Moves! You know what you need to do, and in general you're not told how to do it. This opens up a lot of freedom of choice and lets people do all sorts of ridiculously awesome stuff, because there's the carrot! GO GET THE CARROT!!!! I love Positive Design done well. The OSR this stuff down to an art, the highest form of science. My favorite game, Burning Wheel, is positive design par excellence. Really good PBTA has Moves that are just open enough to allow for creativity, while getting the carrot, see Hearts of Wulin.

But.

Positive Design can have some serious problems. At a basic level, Positive Design is Pavlov on a "global" scale. If you reward an action players will drool on command. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. We're rationalizing animals. We respond to positive impetus. Whether or not that's "right" is irrelvant: we do it. Trying to ask if it's bad or good is like asking if air is bad or good. It's a fact. Using that fact about humanity in a game isn't wrong. But it has to be used very carefully, otherwise the rationalizing part of the animal goes out the window, and suddenly you think you're only a rat hitting the button. That's tragic! Part of what makes playing, fun, so awesome for kids is that they attach a great deal of meaning to it. Childhood games are very serious affairs. They mean something to those who undertake them. If you do too much Positive Design you'll actually wear out the pleasure center in your brain and then you won't be able to even remember what fun really is. 

Negative Design, at first glance, appears to be the opposite of Positive Design. If you do a thing the game doesn't like you're punished for it. If you don't dribble the ball in basketball you can't play. If you touch the ball with your hands in soccer you're penalized. Hits in Dark Souls are devastating. If you get hit in the OSR it's almost always lethal, or at least a huge inconvenience. You know not what to do. 

Negative Design, however, holds a secret: the things they don’t penalize are inherently pleasurable. You pull off a jump in Ninja Gaiden or Mario and you immediately feel good, because you did a thing you found fulfilling. It’s not that you’re rewarded by the system like with Positive Design. The action itself is enough. And, because you never do the same thing the same way, the variety of gameplay is automatic. How you can do something the system doesn’t punish is theoretically infinite! Expression and creativity are inherent parts of a Negative Design. The list of things you can do is wider than what you can’t.

But. 

You can overdo it. If the system is too punishing, then you shut play down entirely. If the negative reinforcement is too light, nobody will discover the style of play that you intended. If the game doesn’t properly communicate the general picture of play through theming and art, players will get lost. It’s really difficult to get a Negative Design correct. The designer of a Negative Design arguably must have a clearer vision of the game than a Positive Design, because figuring out the game is impossible without there being a very strong vision.

The astute may protest: “But no game is entirely a Positive or Negative Design!” And that’s correct! Dark Souls rewards you for stabbing someone in the ass. Points are given for getting balls into or through nets in soccer and basketball. HP is definitely a Negative Design. Like most things in life, it’s not one or the other, but a continuum between two poles. Most games, while being definitely closer to one pole or another, definitely aren’t entirely in one camp. 

Now for that “Eureka!” moment in designing Crescendo. I don’t love dice rolling in RPGs in general. Don’t get me wrong, picking up the magic math rocks is addictive! It’s fun to roll! But the act of breaking up a narrative to pick up the dice has always been jarring to me. I like the table in a steady flow state, one where everyone is locked in, and picking up the math rocks hurts the immersion I look for in Crescendo. 

And the system I had come up with fixed a lot of my issues! Players initiate “checks”, Defying either the LW (GM) or another Player, or the LW (GM) starts calling for dice rolling in batches, changing the flow state to include dice for large stretches of time. Rolling itself was really simple: pick a Skill, roll against an announced DC. There. That’s it. It works. 

But I didn’t love it. For one thing, Crescendo has Stats and Item dice, and it felt like Player investment was irrelevant there. Stats or Items would only come out if a Skill was unavailable. I didn’t like the loose ends. But the ultimately damning thing was that Players would drift out of the narrative. They just picked up a die and rolled. It wasn’t a long break, but Crescendo’s meant to be one long continuous flow of play. 

And then I read the pitch for Journeyman, on Kickstarter. The core mechanic is to roll 3d6 and pick either the top two, middle two, or lowest two, depending upon your fictional advantage, “normal”, or disadvantage. I had seen this idea before, but this time something lit up in the back of my head. 

Crescendo’s rolling changed to grabbing a Skill, Stat, and Item die, based off the narrative the Player had supplied. But I had an idea: you rolled all three dice and automatically took the two lowest dice… unless you could provide clear fictional advantage. At which point you took the highest two. If you failed there are Conditions, which really sting to get, as they take awhile to get rid of. 

Trying the system led to spectacular results! The flow state barely stopped in that session, and we were rolling a lot that night. What happened was simple: once players were told “You need to justify getting those top two dice” the fiction was gamed, hard. Players began narrating to justify higher rolls. So long as I was a bit forgiving at times the Players didn’t break narrative flow. Having more granularity of mechanics actually increased RPing, as Players would take the hint from the system that to not narrate would mean lots of negative feedback. But, as it turns out, narrating and RPing is a naturally pleasing activity! So instead of a chore, players were having a ton of fun! The negative systemic feedback was simple and brutal. The benefits were obvious and creative. Before even the middle of the session there were grand speeches and awful revenge promised. 

The realization hit: I had made Crescendo a very Negative Design. Contrary to the Positive Design of the OSR and Burning Wheel, Crescendo assumes that players will find heavy narration and RP fun activities in and of themselves. No one needs to be given rewards for doing what they already want to do! Instead, the game has a bunch of strategically placed punishments. If you don’t lean into your Traits your actions fail, outright. If you betray your Beliefs you pick up Conditions, even if you succeed. There’s massive changes that happen in the narrative if you change Beliefs, discouraging willy nilly changes. 

An “empty” space is created by the boundary lines. Go outside them and the feedback is immediate and long-lasting. But inside the boundary? There’s an infinite sky. And you got wings. 

The Lancelot Problem

 

“In summary, modernity replaces process with result and the relational with the transactional."

- Nassim Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes

I have developed a metric, a canon of sorts, to judge another’s aesthetic (and thus ethical) roots. This metric takes the form of a riddle, a nasty question I call The Lancelot Problem. So far only one person I know has answered the question correctly, which is more than I expected. One other has answered with brutal honestly, and his failure is almost as good as success. Almost. It’s really close. I commend him here for being braver than the rest of us.  How many will even get that far is beyond me. Maybe a handful? Possibly ten? Who knows?

Cast your mind to the mythical land of Logres, King Arthur’s halcyon days of peace, wherein his knights could right the wrongs at home, while Arthur labored tirelessly abroad. Eventually it all comes crashing down, like all good things. Mordred, the offspring of Arthur’s lack of true control, brings the chickens to roost. Lancelot is long gone, exiled after sleeping with Guenevere and accidentally killing Gawain's brother. But times are desperate. The mightiest knight is needed. Mordred is here and must be repulsed. A mortally wounded Gawain sends his letter, begging Lancelot’s help and giving his forgiveness! 

And Lancelot comes! He drums up an army out of nowhere and runs to his old friends' aid! He flies like the wind! Can he come home? Can he blot out his sin?

Too late. 

Just. 

Arthur is dead. Everyone is dead. Excalibur is gone. Logres is falling around Lancelot. What does Lancelot, in the face of a problem literally only he had the martial strength to master, do?

He retires. To a monastery. And stays there as the dream his king and friends shed blood for dissolves in blood and screams. A new dark age descends, and Logres falls. 

And Lancelot does nothing.

Why? Why would Lancelot do this?

I won’t give you the answer. But I will tell you some of the wrong ones. 

It is not merely a question of an anachronism. In medieval stories retiring to a monastery is akin to the Questing Beast in terms of feelings that we cannot quite comprehend. I acknowledge that there’s a historical blindspot for us here. But it doesn’t invalidate the real answer. 

It is not because Lancelot decided that the world was futile, and that he could do nothing about it. Lancelot was many things, but a coward wasn’t one of them. Neither was he a defeatist. Nor a pessimist. 

It was not to be closer God. Lancelot had his crises of faith already. He’d had his trials. He had been shown who he was. Arthurian lore is filled with people deciding upon their courses of action despite being told the outcome, because they are who they are and damn the torpedoes! Lancelot didn’t have doubts. He did what he did.

It wasn’t because of his failure. Again, Lancelot was not a stranger to failure. He wasn’t afraid of it. He didn’t cave in because he thought he couldn’t do it. 

Why did Lancelot hang up his weapons and watch as the world went to pot around him?

The answer is so simple. But almost no one I have asked the question of has been able to answer it, on the first go. And why can’t we fathom this very simple reality?

Could it be that, since we expect life to imitate an idealization - which we immortalize in movies - we deny ourselves the ability to conceive of art that shows life? We expect the pre-moderns to make art not inherently connected to their experiences. We think they just made up stuff they thought sounded cool, like we do. But they didn't. They didn't have time for flighting fancies. They had to make things they truly believed in, something we know very little about.

Have we been rendered so brainless as to think that myths are merely an exaggeration of reality, as opposed to a direct psychological and spiritual mirror? Once again, pre-moderns didn't have the mindset for mere flights of fancy. If they did something, they truly believed in it. They didn't write about people as they wished they were, but how they actually behaved. Gilgamesh fails to resurrect his friend because he's an arrogant asshole. Achilles sulks. Arthur fathers multiple children, some with his own half-sisters. Gawain flinches as the axe comes down. Lancelot retires to a monastery.

In our race to idealize everything, as post-Enlightenment victims in need of something to strive for, do we accidentally cut out the most vital, the most important, the truest, parts of ourselves? Do we forget that the rationality is secondary to human behavior, a post-fact rationalizing of an action? We have certainly failed to notice that even the least peasant in the Medieval era was mightier than any of us. They could rise up and destroy their lords if they wanted, and they did. Don't pretend for two seconds that you have their courage, nor try to pretend you know where it comes from. It certainly doesn't come from betwixt your ears.

The man who failed this test so admirably he practically won, affirmed all the above and so much more, with one very simple, poignant, heartfelt and heartbreaking statement:

“I don’t want to feel.”