This Is All Kyle's Fault

 

The Incidents

2012 and 2013 rewrote what I thought roleplaying games could be, suddenly and violently, and I've been trying to catch up ever since. In those two years I was in the two campaigns that changed everything: I ran Revenge of the Countess of Fire in Burning Wheel and played in Kyle's undocumented Torchbearer campaign. Both of these campaigns completely rewrote how I approached life, nevermind RPGs.

Revenge of the Countess of Fire

Revenge of the Countess of Fire was my second Burning Wheel campaign. It came during a particularly harsh time of my life. I was at the tail end of my time in Atchison. The dreams of and visitations from the black-haired girl had just come to an end, and I was a nervous wreck. I started running the game, and my brain just... couldn't handle it. Maria told me end the campaign. I listened, and told everyone we had three sessions left. And I decided to put in literally everything I possibly could to those last three. I anticipated not running anything for a long time after that, or even thinking about RPGs, as I was utterly fried.

Those last three sessions were some of the best of my life. I had never, not even once, encountered anything like them before that. They were the first three of many. I had no idea what I was doing, but these were sessions that ended with everyone sitting quietly together in a circle, talking about important stuff. It's been 14 years, so the specifics are fuzzy now, but I remember the feeling, clear as a bell. It was this quiet joy, the kind of thing you remember from your childhood. Except we were adults. And we could really talk.

The last session was... revolutionary. It was everything. It was so good that the session ended in total silence. You could literally hear a pin drop. Someone whispered, after a few minutes: "That was something out of Tolkien."

It was a feeling that I had felt before, but in the dark of night, before my icons as I wept, when Silence overcame the turmoil in my soul. But there we were, looking at each other, and realizing that we were all feeling it, together.

I didn't understand what happened. I didn't know if it was on purpose. But there were echoes throughout my years of gaming that told me that this could be done on purpose.

Could.

Kyle's Torchbearer Campaign

Back in 2013, I was part of my brother-in-law Kyle's last great campaign. Not good. Not excellent. Great.

It was like a symphony. The sessions kept building, one upon another. Each challenge felt like it was part of a cohesive whole that was just beyond my ability to ascertain. It's hard to define it, 13 years later, but this wasn't a "Wow, this is something special" that I thought about years later. Right then and there I knew it was special. Knew it. So did the other players.

But the memory of Countess of Fire was still strong in me, and I realized that it was beginning to line up. But, like usual, what I had done by accident, he was doing on purpose. Fully. Kyle knew exactly what he was doing. I couldn't track how he was doing it, but I could tell that he was.

And then the moments starting rolling in. It's hard to define them now, and anyone who has had a real "moment" happen in an RPG knows exactly what I am talking about: the exposure over time builds to things that are far greater than your ability to communicate to anyone else.

When the end came, it brought Ragnorrak in a spectacular manner, one that was incredibly meaningful. And suddenly it clicked. I don't know how, but suddenly I saw Kyle. And I said the only truth I could hold onto: "You just showed us... you."

I heard Kyle's sad smile over the phone. It's not too often that happens.

The Building That Followed

Once that piece fell into place, I knew what I needed to do. What Kyle did by intuition, I could teach myself to do.

Over the years, two places came out of this process: Heranyt and Kalvano.

Heranyt

Heranyt is the place that I find, deep within me. It houses all the intellectual questions I have, put into a world: my feelings about theodicy, concerns of totalitarianism, eugenics and secularism (they're linked!), astrology, and the enchantment of the world. It isn't so much a place of light as a place of the socratic. Heranyt is a place I can ask questions and feel perfectly safe to do so... as well as show some of the answers I have experienced.

At the center of Heranyt shines Elpida, the Flame Reborn, the Presence Imperishable, the one that will eventually spread from Heranyt to the rest of the fallen universe, restoring it and elevating it into Seitsemann, restoring it to the Seven-Storied Mountains. The people of Heranyt, aboard the Apocalypse Ship, will range ahead to help find those who also want to heal what's broken.

I can close my eyes, hold out my hand, and point to the golden Ring of Tears encircling Herany, seeable by day, even. I can tell you exactly what phases the moons are: Tuntameton, the wise blue moon, is at full. Eous, the foul imprisoned moon, is almost invisible. The night sky had a red tinge, but that’s now turning a teal. I can just… close my eyes. I see it.

The Process

I took two years, just to myself, to journal the setting. All the while I listened to BA55, by Switchfoot, which is one of my favorite songs.

Heranyt was arrived at by listening to me, and the things that I cared about, intently. I know of no other way to put it. I found a basis in two basic things I love: Western Europe and its cultural degradation around World War 1, the Desert Fathers, eldritch horror, and the Byzantine Empire. I read and studied about those things, and just... listened to how those things affected me. Not how I thought about them, but how I felt about them.

While Heranyt started as a Burning Wheel setting, it's at is best in Crescendo. It is the place I feel most comfortable. It just... came from within. All of it.

Kalvano

Calling Kalvano the dark twin of Heranyt is not correct. Kalvano has at her center Nalkalapsi, the Star Eater, the Wyrm That Devours, who will be released from the confines of Kalvano to ravage those who will refuse to embrace Elpida when She is released to heal the universe. 

Because of Nalkalapsi, the planet is corrupted from the core, outwards. The Star Eater has an uncanny knowledge of the peoples of his and other planets, using their own unspoken desires, fears, and internal vices against them. Where Heranyt invites Socratic questioning to restore the soul, Kalvano turns those same questions into wedges of doubt and self-destruction. Even the dead do not stay so: they return, fully cognizant and malicious.

Nalkalapsi would have destroyed the people of Kalvano, but they cried for help, and The Outsider intervened. He created the Shadow Hands, and they grabbed the last portion of the planet that wasn't totally corrupted, forced the survivors onto it, and then held it aloft. Forever. This is called The Elevated Plateau. The people of Kalvano had a respite.

But, even with the Elevated Plateau, Nalkalapsi's power was too great. He snaked up around the Shadow Hands, and burrowed into the Elevated Plateau. The dead began to rise, and forgotten places in the world began to be converted to evil. Once again, the people cried for aid. And this time the Immortals of Sota heard them. They, in turn, implored the stars for aid... and they came down themselves, burrowing into the Elevated Plateau. Sanctifying it. Driving back the corruption of Nalkalapsi. Not a lot of stars have this done this, so the Elevated Plateau hasn't been totally recovered, but it has begun. People can at least live, especially the land of Rikuma, where the most stars have fallen.

Orbiting Kalvano is Sota, the Moon of the Immortals. It shines so brightly that its red light can be seen in the daytime. Battles the size of continents have been witnessed ranging acrost its surface. The Immortals train for when they will be needed, but some of them, usually the lower ones, come to Kalvano and help as they can.

And yet, when the time comes, and Nalkalapsi emerges from the wreckage of Kalvano, the centuries will have forged the peoples of Kalvano and Sota into a force capable of of protecting the worthy from the Star Eater.

The Process

I first discovered Kalvano while on deployment in 2016, in a Burning Wheel game I ran. I loved the setting immediately, but didn't quite understand what I do about the place now. The game was a lot of fun, but it ended sooner than I would have liked.

Before I could really argue the point with the players, I had a mental breakdown while on deployment. 

They shipped me home. And it took another two horrifyingly difficult years before I was able to run another game: The Giggling Dark, which ran for two years, and then Autarchy, which unfortunately never finished.

And then all the events in the Elephant in the Room happened.

The point is. I've been busy.

I haven't really been able to focus like I used to, until... well... now? I suppose? And, when I finally focus like I used to, I find a living world. I find a place eerily similar to the pre-Imperial Romans. As in, Plutarch's Lives. Because, yes, I read that for school. A proud people, filled with pride in their res publica, the people. The idea of races being a real dividing issue beyond simple biology is nonsense. Biology can go so wrong that what's important is what someone can give you, not what they are. The dead can rise, corrupted. Who cares if not all the living can procreate with me?

I don't find wisdom when I look into Kalvano. I don't find the yearning for a higher truth, I don't find the surprise from wandering into a wider world. I find exhaustion. I find stoicism. And I find that nobody can get away with not fighting. I find a pragmatism and exhaustion that either leads to heroism or death. There isn't room for true corruption. 

There's the war. 

Sure, there's vultures who pick the battlefields and graves, but that's not the same thing as "becoming an evil creature" like in Heranyt. You either cower behind the people who hold the shields, hold the shield, or pick the corpses.

Oh, that's just Torchbearer.

Literally: the Grind makes time a threatening blade, advancement can only be gained with failure and making mistakes, and recovery is a key part of the game. But it's not mudcore: the game gives plenty of opportunities for amazing bursts of awesomeness. It's just that those moments of awesome are weighted down a bit by whether you have any water in your canteen, or if you lost your temper at the door you were trying to unlock.

Go ahead, be a hero. Just remember that you literally have to put your pants on like everyone else: one leg at a time.

The thing is: I'm terrible at this kind of thing in real life. If Heranyt is something that naturally comes out of me, Kalvano is talking about something I'm weak at: simply living.

Or, at least I think so. I have no idea what's going to come out of this process.

Normally, 

I try and find a way to conclude these things. It's what a good writers does, after all, and I'm not a terrible one. But here, after everything I just wrote... I'm done. For now, at least. I don't know why, but this is where I'm supposed to stop.

So I am.

For now?

Nails and Naps

One of my friends 

went to a monastery on Mount Olympus for a litlte while. Yes, there's Orthodox monasteries on Mount Olympus. And my friend went there. He had an elder, who helped him on the way to salvation. Part of this meant helping my friend deal with "bad" thoughts. Think a psychologist, but... well honestly a lot better. This dude lives with you, has seen it all, and knows your bullshit better than you do. There's a level of "Yeah been there done that do this" these elders have that most laymen simply can't comprehend.

So my friend was having really dark thoughts. And he brought them forward to his elder, knowing the man wouldn't judge or take advantage of him. His elder looked at him, and then said with a bit of a wry smile: "Go take a nap. Take the afternoon off." 

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

And sometimes, you just need a nap.

In a recent, widely circulated video essay, 

Vindicta RPGs delivered a poetic eulogy for the burnt-out Game Master, diagnosing our collective fatigue through Nietzsche's Three Metamorphoses. It’s a compelling piece of mythmaking. But it harbors a critical, unstated error: the assumption that GM burnout is primarily an attitude problem.

It isn't. 

The causal arrow runs in the opposite direction. You cannot simply "will" yourself into the mindset of a child at play while operating a mechanical beast that demands the bandwidth of an air-traffic controller. The tools you bring to the table actively dictate the posture you take.

This entire video is exactly the problem with conventional play. You can't deny that. He describes conventional play with an exactitude that only the utterly stupid or brainwashed could disagree with. The GM pours his heart and soul into something literally nobody can take the time for, using a bad rule system, with methods that are way too intensive for what they provide. The problem is that Vindicta is way too poetic, and goes into some really pretty verbiage for what's in reality a series of bad design and social decisions.

Bad rules systems

do exist. There are objective standards you can measure a bad game by, and they're pretty simple:

Given your goal, the design requires more work than you feel it gives back.

You can't just

ask if something works. You have to ask what the goal of the design is and what its parameters are. A random encounter table is going to be terrible if your goal is to resolve whether you hit someone or not. It's a lot of work for "yes" or "no".

If your goal is beyond "Yes" or "No", that changes how you evaluate it.

You need to ask what the goal is. If you can't answer that question, from examining the text, you got an objective problem on your hands.

The amount of work,

given your goal, is absolutely a part of the equation. RPGs are by nature an improv activity, and improv requires processes that can be used with very little effort... because you're going to be doing a lot of them. 

The output

must be more than what you put in. You have to feel rewarded! You have to feel like something that took so little to get so much back is like cheating. At that point you're actually able to enjoy the results, because you actually have the brain space.

Yeah that's a lot of subjective

reactions, but look at what we're looking for: does the process itself yield a pretty consistent subject response? The objective part isn't how the person reacts it's how the mechanics cooperate with the person to create that subjective experience. Objective evaluation means looking at the things not a part of you to see how easy it is to interact with, given your goal. 

There's a very easy metric

one can use for figuring out if a design is objectively good , given you know what the goal is. I use this rule when designing. I have footage showing this works. It ain't about my opinion at that point. You can go look at what I'm doing.

If you can't easily handle the rule consistently while drunk or tired, it's bad design.

 That's not saying you can't make a rules-heavy game. I don't make lite games. I just don't. I'm simply saying that if you're having a bad day and are tired, there's no actual difference between that and being drunk. If you're having a bad day, and therefore aren't really thinking clearly, the game should not be compromised.

If your game doesn't assume a flawed user, what's the point of playing it? Because I don't know about you, but I almost never at fully optimal when playing my games. 

Notice how that completely bypasses

most of what Vindicta is saying? And that's before we get to the quiet part that Vindicta isn't saying ,but I'm in the habit of saying such things loudly.

System mattering isn't

necessarily part of his "camel-lion-child" setup. Going "hardcore OSR" isn't the only answer to realizing that modern DnD sucks absolute balls. Sometimes you go in a different reaction: realizing that mechanics can help an attitude problem. People show up tired, and if they find the experience lacking, they're not going to invest anything in it. Games are supposed to help you get energy back, not lose you more!

If a common theme of modern DnD is scheduling... guess what that means.

The system doesn't give back more than what it takes.

Which means it sucks.

And we know Vindicta knows this

because he's designing his own system! I'm not poo-pooing that, for the record. I too am designing my own stuff, and I think there's plenty of room for differing systems. So I am not just nitpicking here. If he didn't think system mattered, if he thought it was merely a question of accepting the inner child and producing questions for the players to respond to.. he wouldn't be using rules. Or making his own.

On some intuitive level, Vindicta knows that. Poetry won't fix a engine that burns more fuel than it produces. If a game system expects its GM to be a heroic martyr just to keep the gears turning, the system is broken, no matter how elevated your mindset is.

I know Vindicta is addressing a central attitude problem on the part of the GM, but the unstated "Your tools determines you mindset" is a critical error.

So the next time 

you feel that familiar dread settling in over a canceled session or a bloated prep folder, don't default to self-flagellation. Don't look for a grand spiritual transformation to endure the weight of an unyielding campaign.

Look at your tools instead.

Ask if the engine you're feeding is actually returning the energy you pour into it. If it demands that you be a hero, a martyr, or an air-traffic controller just to get through a Tuesday night, set it down. You don't need a new philosophy of the soul. You need a system that assumes you’re human, tired, and just trying to play a good game—and maybe, before anything else, a good afternoon nap.

The Fall of the King of Sota: Chapter Thirteen

October 18th

It is amazing how this game still throws me, years in. Two players show up, in totally different places, and manage to still produce gold. 

A thanks to Abbadon for showing up and trying! Traveling is a bitch!

The ending of this session had me and Kredo speculating as to what may have actually happened. I started drawing in my journal because I produced three different creatures in the space of an hour, and I wanted to know what they looked like.

Golden, you're getting to me.

Even this late in the Book, there's still that's gonna throw me. The butterfly at the end... what the heck is that? I've got some ideas now, but at the time? That's just what the tea leaves said, and that's what I ran with. We think it's a thematic closing of the loop; all sorts of crazy stuff has dropped out of the sky these last few months, and it's the first time something dropped out of the sky that The Outsider literally noped out of existence.

What was it?

And what was it doing that made God Himself say "Absolutely not"?

I shudder to think. And then chuckle evilly. We're going to find out.

Crescendo Demo for a Bunch of Friends!

 

The Fall of the King of Sota: Chapter Twelve

 

I Wrote the Following Before the Chapter Session

I'm generally a pretty laidback GM. I run the procedures, and wait. And wait. And wait.  I just let the players through down whatever track they like, and then when I think thinigs are wrapping up, I start pulling on their threads and snapping them. Hard.

I started doing that. Crescendo is organized into "Books": (at least) three Storysteins, with a Capstone to force things to close out, and then you're done. I could push for a fourth Storystein, but I don't think I will. So we're in the last bit of this Book. I'm really good at ending things. And it's time to start doing that.

October 5th through October 10th

With King Lucien returned, he wastes no time: scouts are sent from @Lady Marie 's forces to Montport.

Seren finds a young girl who was being used terribly by someone in the cathedral; she was being chained up and used. The culprit turns out to be the quartermaster of the cathedral: Fr. Elliot, who had total command of the whole place.

Silvanus and Abbadon take over the new elves, and begin to train them. The elves keep to themselves, but there's still something about them that the townsfolk find disturbing.

October 11th through October 15th

On October 11th, King Lucien left for Montport with three platoons.

Lady Marie and Pierre La Forge instigated a movement against the newly arrived elves, preventing them from trading, gambling, or really doing anything other than lying down in a gutter.

Don't think this makes them allies: La Forge increased the price of all forged items for all New Sota City refugees by 100% to make up for the imposition they had made upon his city. Tension  begins to build within Newport.

October 16th- Chapter Twelve

The ending is a direct reference to Chapter Two, and the journaling of Lillian's player, Golden. What he thought was a ghost haunting him was an agent of Telvra. He was human. He had messed himself up past recognition, but human. 

That means there's a human civilization so magically advanced that the long-lived elves, who are natively good at magic, couldn't even detect them.

What the players should have heard was the trap snapping shut. I don't know if they did, but there's an inference they should have drawn.

I'M TELLING THEM TO DRAW IT!

Do you know how much work I put into that twist? Almost nothing. I had a general idea of what was going on in the area, I made a Setting Bible, and as time went on, I just naturally went "Okay, this is what's actually going on". I didn't write anything down. I just noted the shape.

And the players filled in everything else.

Fuckit, I'm Going Back to Torchbearer

Some things just stick with you.

Torchbearer and I have had a contentious relationship, as recorded previously. At the time I logged my issues with the super-focus on dungeoncrawling, the advancement system, and the Grind. Ironically enough, these are the reasons I'm going back. After trying some old school stuff and spending some years learning a bit more about why I play games, I'm going back.

Dungeoncrawling

This is probably the most unexpected change, at least for me. As I stated in that previous post (it's linked above, go read it) I generally don't like being told what to run. At the time I wanted a more open and general system, within a genre.

Well, guess what?

I made Crescendo. I run it four times a month.

I don't particularly need a "general" game. And, having spent years looking into old school stuff and dungeon crawling, I've come to a different appreciation for dungeons, specifically. My appreciation has changed from "running Zelda puzzles" to "Oh cool, a mythic underworld that can do things that the overworld can't!". It's a shift in what I want, and it's the least rational of my reasons, but it's fundamentally the most important one.

Advancement System

Five years ago, the advancement system of Torchbearer really bothered me. A number of passes and fails that you have to take to advance? Why??? That's a lot of tracking. And it is, don't get me wrong. That's a lot to put on players. But, years later, I've learned these are the kinds of things you just have to trust people with. You help when you can, but you leave the systems at their fingertips, and they either play or they don't.

And if they don't, it's no skin off my nose.

I like the system. It leaves things completely under player control, and makes them need to learn the Trait system, so that they can leverage it fully. Is it clunky? Sure. Does it force engagement? Yes.

It's not my favorite part of the system, but it sure does ensure play that I care about more, as I get older.

Play or get out.

The Grind

This may be the biggest turnaround from the original post. I have done a total 180. At the time, I was very much in the school of “narrate till the GM calls for a roll”. In that framework, I came to hate what Torchbearer was doing: why have all these rules if narration was expected to be the primary method of play?

I have since come to disagree with this manner of playing, to a degree that almost excises me from storygaming. For awhile I thought it did, so I looked rather extensively into the oldschool. And I almost thought I was one of them.

Almost. But Not Quite.

See, the thing that I found was that, ultimately, the oldschool was too tactical for me. The oldschool, as a movement, are quite tactical. Which makes sense! The rules are derived from Chainmail, all told. ODnD calls itself a wargame. The goal of the rules is not to impart an emotion, but to create a tactical situation you have to navigate. You can create emotional connections to what you’re doing, but the OSR stories are (shockingly!) going to create the effect of a Tony Bath campaign, if you are if you are running the systems as written

The theme of the OSR is war.

And that realization came about because of seeing the OSR at its best: ACKSII. Macris’s magnum opus is a serious work, and pretending there’s any modern contender for its scale is silly. If there’s any modern example of Tony Bath personified, it’s ACKSII. And I played twelve glorious sessions of it… and then stopped.

But why?

The Need to Return to a Moment

At the time, I couldn’t have been able to say. My emotional impulses have been much harder for me to read post-2016, so I accepted this was where I was at, and moved on. 

And then this moment happened in The Fall of the King of Sota, where the Sword of Uriel was drawn and used.

This little moment set off some major fireworks in my mind and heart. It wasn’t the only moment this had happened, but this time the moment woke up something different within me.

See, over the last five years one moment from that last Torchbearer game had been living in my head.

Stephanie’s “Jedi” had been lowered down a rope to the top of an enormous stalagmite. She stood in a sea of black. She had no way of knowing how far it was to the bottom; her torch simply didn’t reach that far. They were on turn 2 of The Grind: not so far as to get worried, but far enough to where if something happened Stephanie was gonna feel it. 

So of course I dropped The Big Bad of the dungeon right on her head… and they had a talk. Turns out he hadn’t meant to cause all the problems that had occasioned the dungeon delve in the first place. He had woken up and started burrowing up. 

Oh, and he was a creature of plague and pestilence. 

And he liked Stephanie’s Jedi. 

What made this moment stick out, years later, 

was the history up to it and the ludonarrative coherence around it. Torchbearer’s language is one of exhaustion. If your narration is less than perfect, it costs. Hurts. Cripples. But it also is why advancement happens, why Fate and Persona points are handed out. You are constantly looking at the how limited your time is. You measure the world in time passing. Not even literal hours, the feeling that time has been pressing on you until you collapse.

So when something totally unknown comes out of the dark, the first thing that pops into your head is "Oh God, I'm so tired already". There was a dread. "If she gets hurt, her exhaustion may kill her before she ever gets back to us." Everyone knew exactly what was at stake, and they were absolutely terrified for Stephanie.

For the last five year I haven't been able to find that feeling anywhere else. Anywhere. And what I thought of as the annoying parts of that experience was the reason why I was able to have it in the first place.

I spent five years running away from Torchbearer's friction, only to realize the friction was the engine of the exact feeling I'd been searching for.

Oops.

"Over-Mechanizing" RPGs

 

This post is attempting to kill two birds with one stone. We'll see how it works.

Both Daniel from Driving and Dragons and Lex/aka Squid Lord have been in something of a conversation with me over the past few days. 

I posted Always Winter, Never Christmas, where I pissed and moaned about the lack of mechanical direction in RPG campaigns.

A conversation, however indirect, has spun out of this one post. Lex and I have been going back and forth (my replies and his original posts can be found here), and he posted a new response here. I have thoroughly enjoyed these correspondences, told Lex as such, and told him I would post a response as soon as I could. He told me to sit on it. And I did! I kinda had a way forward that was plotted out, and I was really excited to sit down and bang out my response.

And then Daniel posted the video below about some dumbass arguing with me on Twitter (for once, I wasn't the dumbass, sorry Lex). 

Daniel's musings before rightfully roasting my idiot of an interlocutor sparked off my plans, and I decided "to hell with it", and resolved to address them both, because my position on design doesn't seem entirely understood.

I'm not sure how that could be, I'm an absolutely clear and concise person! Ross from Mythic Mountain has never spent hours trying to decode my rantings and musings to see if I'm crazy or secretly brilliant! Somehow he got more out of what I was saying than I did. Figures.

I've never been called out for being unclear! Or grandiose! Or just downright weird in my views! The abovementioned Ross has never pointed this out to me!.. or my wife... or my brother... or anyone else.

Anyone who says this hasn't seen me debate about the Star Wars sequels with ten people, at once. No, really, that happened. That's on some random Discord. I can't remember which one, not anymore.

The first step to fixing a problem is admitting there's a problem? Hopefully?

The way to explain my view of design that most amuses me as of this moment is to show the following picture, and then explain it.

Why?

Because I like Medieval labyrinths, I like talking about menticide/brainwashing, and I love being absolutely clear in everything I write.

Assumptions Make an Ass...

First, we gotta get our assumptions out of the way. I'm pretty sure Daniel and I share more than a few assumptions, given that he's a Roman Catholic with seemingly tradional leanings, but Lex is a Randian Objectivist, best of my knowledge, and that means I gotta try and say the unsaid.

As an Orthodox  Christian, I don't think the natural state of man actually works that well. Humans need help to operate in a way that doesn't just naturally destroy them. You have to guide human behavior.

Not control it.

Not stifle it.

Guide.

The word is deliberate.

Human Nature Needs Help

Light correctives are to applied to most human behavior, so that way it doesn't do what it always does: degenerate. You can't stop degeneration, and you can't fix stupid, but you can help the willing, for a time. You either agree with this, or you don't. I'm not going to defend something I find obvious.  But I will state it so that way you don't have to ask what I'm up to.

Lex Wanted a Statement...

... in his latest reply. Lex wanted me to, and here's the quote:

In what way do you want to see storygaming philosophy concretized?

Sure! In Crescendo-

No, you don't get to turn this into an opportunity to talk about promoting your own work, because goddammit, every third post that people make in the TRPG hobby these days seems like it's about self-promotion and pushing their own work. It feels like an advertising seminar rather than a high-minded discussion of philosophies, opportunities, and methodologies.

Goddamnit, Lex! Fine. You're right. I take issue with the following statement you made, which Daniel indirectly agreed with in the above video:

... what I really mean is carrot-and-stick rewards, because I don't think those are legitimately part of storygaming, either as a philosophy or as a mechanical hook that you can hang a similarity between wargames and story game RPGs on.

That would be a bit of an anti-hook. Most of the mechanical manifestation of the storygaming philosophy is purely[10] carrot, not stick. When there are visible and deterministic negatives, they are generally carried in the form of resource management (a real element of both historical and modern wargaming), and not carrot-and-stick operations.

To be fair, Daniel called it an "attitude problem". I don't know if he meant what Lex meant, but I have a feeling if the two of them started talking they'd agree. If I'm wrong, they're both more than welcome to comment otherwise.

An Example

Let's go back to faerie tales. If we were to use the whole friction idea, there's a really obvious place to do it.

Whether or not humans listen when being told what to do. This is a central point of friction in enough faerie tales that making it a central mechanic wouldn't go amiss. 

So, let's say you have a Stat called Humility. We'll rate it from 1-5. When you must act upon information and/or advice that was given you, roll d6: if you roll equal to or under your Humility, you must choose something else to do. Something you know won't work. And then further complications are chosen for you by the table.

What's more, we can have it to where pleasant things (like sudden fortunes, accolades, or success in marriage) in the story have a chance to decrease your Humility, while unpleasant things (like losing your wife, being betrayed by your friend, or going to war) have a chance to increase it. 

And then, yes, pretty much stick to "we know how to make a faerie tale, we know what faerie tales are".  I would argue that one piece of friction will go a long way to making it feel authentic.

Humans Need Friction

My issue with your statement, Lex, is that human nature requires sticks so they think to look for (or return to) carrots. 

And, on top of that, stories require friction in order to work. Friction is at the heart of stories! And from just a basic knowledge of human nature, people don't like using sticks, even if they're necessary as a funnel. Asking people to be masochistic is wrong. Mechanics are necessary to help to supply the stick, so that way people aren't thinking of ways to hurt each other. Because, yes, people perseverating on how to hurt each other is a bad thing.

Stories need friction. Humans are bad at friction. Mechanics help take the burden of making friction off of humans.

Humans Need Nudging

Now, Daniel may be wondering why he's in this article, because so far, it's probably not terribly clear. See, in his commentary, Daniel said he wasn't sure there was a mechanical solution to an attitude problem.

Now, he's partly correct. You can't fix the unwilling, and you can't fix stupid. But you can help the willing and weak. Which, for the record, all of us are weak from time to time.

Remember that bit about the Medieval labyrinth, from earlier? We're back to it. The concept of a labyrinth in Christianity was a pilgrimage and/or meditative process. You go on a walk, in a predetermine way, and your experience the same labyrinth differently because you are different this time.  It's the same basic concept of the Rosary or the Jesus Prayer, just when it comes to walking. 

The structure frees you from your own exhaustion, carrying you just far enough to where you can get started. The repetition enables you to stop repeating yourself.

An Example

My favorite example is the game Misspent Youth. At the beginning of every session each player asks and answers a question from the standpoint of their characters. These short conversations are used during the session, in a pre-determined "flow":

1. What’s Up: Sets up the episode's initial conflict or threat. Establishes the setting, the daily life of the PCs, and how the Authority’s System of Control is currently encroaching on their world.

2. Fighting Back: The PCs take the initiative and push back against the Authority's threat.

3. Heating Up: the conflict is escalated. The Authority reacts to the PC's resistance, upping the stakes and forcing the clique to commit further.   

4. We Won:  A moment of tactical victory or good fortune for the PCs. The scene ends with a reveal or twist that sets up the downfall in the next scene.   

5. We’re Fucked: The floor falls out. The Reversal hits. The Authority strikes back with overwhelming force, complications multiply, and the PCs are pushed to their limit.

6. Who Wins: the climax of the episode.  The central Question posed in Scene 1 is answered. The final high-stakes conflict resolves whether the YOs triumph or suffer defeat.   

7. Dust Settles: The epilogue, the aftermath, emotional fallout, and how the world and the characters have changed after the dust has cleared.

This little structure is not a railroad, but a series of thematic links that let you plug in whatever you want, in an order that you  can rely upon. Things do not get old, but instead you can riff and trust that you're going to go somewhere good because you have the structure. Now, granted, that's a very specific structure, and it's going to limit what you can achieve, but what it takes away it gives a lot more, if that's what you're going for.

A more open example is the Trait Vote or Winter Sessions from the Burning Wheel and Mouse Guard/Torchbearer games. Every 6-12 sessions the story is paused for a session .Everyone tweaks their characters a little bit, talks about where things are going, and sets new leads down for the next few sessions. This simple reset does tons for the experience: characters are made more accurate to how they're being played, stuff that's no longer fun is wrapped up, and new plot threads can be thrown down. Nothing is dictated, other than taking a quick second to get your breath. This little momentary jolt goes stupidly far.

So when Daniel wonders 

if mechanics can fix an "attitude problem," my answer is: no, but they can support fragile intent. They give willing players a path to walk when their own creative willpower runs out. And everyone's runs out from time to time.

And when Lex argues 

that storygaming is purely about carrots and self-directed motivation, he's assuming human beings don't need external friction to generate genuine drama. But we do. We need the stick—not as a punishment, but as a lens. We need the labyrinth floor beneath our feet so we don't wander off into the mud.

Good mechanics 

don't force you to go anywhere you don't want to go. They simply ensure that when you take the walk, you don't have to reinvent the path every single step of the way.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go see if Ross has finished decoding this post yet.