Continuing from yesterday's post, let me chart a course forward:
- Take what was recovered by the #BROSR.
- Apply it to other games to see how much transfers over. (We are here)
- Make new games that build upon the recovered knowledge.
This takes some elaboration.
What the #BROSR recovered is not just Rules-As-Written gameplay married to JeffroGygaxian Timekeeping. It is the realization that the procedures of play in AD&D 1st Edition are mini-games unto themselves, all of which synergize together into a cohesive and coherent whole that is greater than the sum of its parts and when the parts are removed the machine of play dysfunctions and begets a downward spiral that can only be fixed by replacing what was removed.
This is best realized by the fact that the AD&D1e combat rules scale up from Man To Man to vast armies seamlessly without needing supplementary products (i.e. no need for BattleSystem) through the simple expediant of ratios.
We now know, through this rediscovery, that AD&D is a wargame. Domain Play demands wargame play. Putting the roles of signficant characters--Patrons--into the hands of players from the get-go not only gets this macro-level dynamic going right away, but also serves as the primary input for a Perpetual Gameplay Machine that upends the conventional comprehension of the RPG medium. Interactions between Patrons organically and emergently creates scenarios for player-characters to participate in as they are able.
Instead of the players being passive or reactive, doing only what the Game Master has ready for them, it is the players that are the active party driving gameplay and the Game Master is instead reactive spending his time as a disinterested and impartial referee adjudicating interactions and administering the results thereof. The opportunity to intervene in these affairs, or to exploit gaps in attention inevitably created by them, mirrors historical examples exactly and that power cannot be understated.
Other games that exhibit this strength of design include Classic Traveller, so it is not something confined to AD&D1e.
What is lacking is the deliberate exploitation of this strength to make macro-scale play as easy to comprehend and execute as Man-To-Man play is.
It is necessary, but not sufficient, to be able to take Your Guy and slot him into a skirmish-scale or even small forces level wargame battle. I appreciate that my MechWarrior PC can easily slot into a standard BattleTech/AeroTech game. I want to be able to slot him into a fleet level battle with equal ease of play, and I want to be able to mix scales during play with equal ease- such as when another player successfully boards my guy's flagship during a massive fleet action.
Your game needs to root itself in a tabletop wargame. It needs to scale. It needs to allow a PC to slot in at any scale at any time. It needs to be able to move up and down the scale during play, such as when a cosmic event completely upends Your Guy's domain and thus changes what the state of play therein (due to strict timekeeping records showing that Event X goes on during your session, so it pops while your swording your problems away).
The interactions need to become a machine whose operation generates play organically and emergently without outside input so the GM need only adjudicate the rules and administer the results. Players need to be driving the campaign from the start, which is why you start with handing out Patrons and let them mess about a bit before having a regular table session.
You must leave no room for Theater Kid faggotry, no frustrated novelist dickery (looking at you John Wick), no Writer's Room Muh Narrative/Stoytelling bullshit- none of the attack vectors for SJWs and other Death Cultists to push the poz and promote the Total State Theocracy that they demand. No RPG social fallacies either: no One True Party, no fixed groups, Open Table play as normal procedure, etc. (all of which faciliated by the aforementioned Timekeeping).
Notice what I did not say is necessary: Classes, Levels, Hit Points, Skills, XP schemes, etc. All of that is up for grabs, and should be kept or culled as the needs of the game require.
It is time once more to revisit the games of yesteryear and reconsider what they do and how they do it in light of what we now know, and with what we learn to apply that to new designs--games aiming to replace the converged and crippled crap out there--going forward.
The future is found in realizing the visions of the past in light of what was recovered- like RetroWave, but for RPGs.
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