What D&D doesn’t offer me

I’ve been keeping track of the D&D5E playtest stuff, liking some of what they’re doing, but also taking a hard look at why D&D, for me, never really goes as smoothly or nicely as I’d like. It mostly comes down to what I want out of fantasy, and how efficient other games are at hitting that, in a way D&D isn’t.

Generating Interesting Stuff in Play

There’s basically two methods that end up being the default ways in which D&D gets run.

First, the dungeon (equally, the sandbox world), where the action is mostly contingent on the players choosing to travel and explore. The thing about this is that going too fast can get your characters killed, going too slow is boring. It’s definitely a tradeoff but definitely punishes either end and makes for a high learning curve. A lot of the action that happens in these often turns out to be when things go wrong – whether that’s a simple plan gone to crap or a series of unlucky rolls. Note that rogue-like videogames pretty much fulfill this same gameplay space.

Second, the branching path story. This is exactly identical to what most videogame rpgs are right now, except they have an advantage in that (well designed) games never leave players poking around not know what to do for long periods of time – there’s characters who give you quests, submenus that help you remember what you needed to do, etc. All the sort of fussing around that happens in a tabletop game (“Is this character really important or not? Will they betray us? Are they telling the truth?” “Look, he’s the waiter, he doesn’t matter, ok?”).

What I want instead

Mostly what I end up interested in is exploring a world in terms of flavor if not endless almanacs of details, and seeing (and playing) different characters with interesting goals and motivations and personality – with fun action fights.

When you’re digging through an area trying not to die, the details take precendence over flavor, and when most of what you encounter is trying to eat you, there’s not a lot of room for interesting motivations or personality.

Likewise, branching path games don’t give you a lot of room to have your characters’ motivations or personality make much of a difference.

In a lot of ways, what I end up wanting from D&D is better supplied by other games. I’m thinking the next time I run D&D I will have to have a hack to basically establish scene framing and skip this whole dungeon or prepped encounters things altogether.

Roleplaying Games about Evil

I had an interesting realization today- all the good roleplaying games that deal with evil, make a core part of play the issue of collaborating or compromising with evil. I don’t know if it’s a requirement to treat the subject seriously, but it seems like thus far, the most successful means of making evil acts no longer black and white, but a result of choices made in the moment, under pressure, that end up in terrible places and regret.

Direct Deals with the Devil

Drifter’s Escape and Polaris both deal with making deals and taking offers in the heat of the moment. Of the two, Polaris is kinder – you know from the beginning that your character is doomed, so there’s no surprises there, and the Mistaken with whom you deal, is actually telling the truth when the deals go down. Drifter’s Escape holds hope in front of you by a thread, and you have two actively hostile GMs who are offering power…but quite possibly lying at any juncture in play. It puts you in much more desperate straits and you find yourself accepting evil acts that, sometimes don’t pay off, and worse, sometimes do- you get to spend the rest of the game asking if it was worth it either way.

Indirect Deals with the Devil

Funny enough, Sorcerer falls into this category, despite the core premise being summoning and binding demons. You may suffer constant pressure from your demons, but you also have recourse to be rid of them- you can use the rules for banishing. The games that directly have you making bad deals – there’s no way to be rid of the pressure, at any point. Rather, the temptation to evil has mostly to do with the cross goals of Humanity and the Sorcerer’s personal goals, with the demons usually advocating along the way.

Steal Away Jordan also has indirect deals – nothing “forces” you to seek out white allies… but the fact that they have so much more Worth dice makes it always a temptation. And, inevitably, what that means when you have to make choices between the goals of your white allies vs. your fellow slaves, vs. your own.

Dog Eat Dog’s indirect deals come from the Colonizer having no functional way to deal with the Natives outside of arbitrary rules and punishment. The Rules do not deal, compromise, or bend, so then it becomes a question of how do you survive in the face of them?

A constant temptation and external pressure

In Dogs in the Vineyard, the Town Creation rules always start with a reasonable motivation, and either sets it up against people twisting the social system, or the social system itself keeping injustice in place.

The Watchdogs come in to fix the problems, but the thing that always plays out, over and over, is that the morally right thing to do is not well served by the social system itself- the morally correct thing to do demands abandoning the rules of society. (Every session drives you to rebel against Mormonism, might be one way to put it…)

Aside from that, each conflict tempts players to escalate to violence by offering dice. But if you’re actually trying to help people in a community, violence is often the least useful thing…

Poison’d, by comparison, goes the other way around – violence is constant for pirates, and rewards people for committing violence, suffering violence… but more importantly – it also rewards people for actually accomplishing goals… and the real way to do that is through making deals. Although you can make a deal with the Devil in Poison’d, for the most part, the pressure towards evil is more built into the situation of being a pirate rather than anything else. Eventually, though, the questions start becoming – who do you ally with, who do you break trust with, what do you do with people who break trust with you, etc. The inability to leave and the casual acceptance of violence which produces the abusive structure… and how do you navigate it?

Character Sheets and Useability

Notes for better character sheets (and… I wish my G5 was still running. Gargh)

Things that you use together, go together on the page

Don’t make players have to jump back and forth around 3 parts of the character sheet, front and back to do something. Put related materials together- combat stuff, social stuff, magic stuff, etc. It makes it easier in play and easier to teach.

Just because “Strength” and “Intelligence” are both attributes isn’t reason enough to put them together, especially if they are referenced regularly in different processes…

Visual Cues for different sections

Just like art works as visual markers in a book so people can navigate it quickly, it really helps to have slightly different appearances for the sections on your character sheets.

Having 9 boxes with different words attached doesn’t do much- do some subtle stuff- give one box rounded edges, give one box bolded lettering, another italics, put some symbols there, etc. These things become associated with the section, with the information, and with the process of info that needs to be pulled, as people play, and it speeds up reference time.

It’s also easier when you say, “Hey, look at the rounded box on the bottom left corner” than “third box down on the left..” etc.

Take out edge cases

Probably my most common pet peeve, for crunchier games, is the “box for everything” mentality, where the sheet is crowded by bits and pieces and spaces for tracking things that might come up… what? Once every 6 game sessions?

It makes more sense to leave that stuff out and give players white space to mark weird special cases. It also makes it easier for folks to navigate, instead of having to learn “Oh, ignore that part, it probably won’t come up.”

Rules & Reminders

Try to include helpful reminders and common rules. This is invaluable for teaching new players. Instead of navigating the book, it’s right there. And for the experienced players, sometimes you forget that you have a few extra options that you could pull out.

Portrait Space

Give space for folks to draw their characters. Even if someone isn’t an artist, it provides some white space. For everyone that is, it’s a great way to give them ownership over their character and to get them invested in it.

If you’re doing a game with pregens, the character portraits also become quick-sells on characters- some players might pick based on visual cues alone, and that’s fun too.

Structured Conversations and Turn Taking

There’s a neat thread over on the BW forums about reasons to use social mechanics instead of “roleplaying it out” (AKA not using mechanics to resolve social conflicts).

Going to the bigger issues of design and play, functional roleplaying requires all participants to have the chance for meaningful input*.

One thing mechanics do well, is set up a system for “turn-taking”, or generally giving everyone a chance to make that input. A second valuable thing, is that mechanics also put a cap on the conflict.

Just as much as you could sit there for 4 hours describing a never-ending sword fight without mechanics putting a limit to it, you can sit for 4 hours arguing whether to take the Dwarven gold for yourselves or give it to the Dwarven people to rebuild their home. In both cases, odds are pretty good that you’re not going to be able to make that an entertaining 4 hours.

In stories, most social conflicts are resolved rather quickly- the highlighted stances and points are made, and then you move on. One benefit to mechanics is that by putting a cap on it, players have to choose their most relevant points, and not drag it out into a “last word”/endurance argument.

Groups can and do develop social contracts which fit this function, but you do see problems when they try to introduce new players (who then have to learn the implicit rules), or if a players steps out of the bounds, it becomes a big negotiation struggle, as the source of the problem might be completely misidentified. (“My Guy Syndrome” where fidelity to your character = not fun for everyone else involved is a good example.)

Not every game needs social mechanics, though I think in any game where you expect entertaining and meaningful social conflicts to happen, it’s probably a must.

(*Ditto with designing discussion spaces, with the added requirement that you have to develop means to filter the participants from the non-participants, otherwise there is no space for the discussion to happen.)

A design thought

What a game is about vs. what it does vs. what the game has in the fiction are three very different things to explain to a group.

What’s in the fiction is the easiest to push- “A game about samurai”, and yet could really be anything otherwise. What it does is more understood by folks who get how systems push people, and what it’s about is usually the least understood because it’s the creative void in a game.

Of course, this is the Color vs. Technical vs. Creative Agenda concept expressed differently…