My Life As A Gamer: Fixing The Dysfunction In RPGs (Part Five)- When It's Working As Intended

(This is the fifth in a series. The previous posts are here, here, here, and here.)

Introduction

One of the bitter lessons of growing up is the realization that age does not mean wisdom. Many of those that remember Dave Arneson, Gary Gygax, and Dave Weasely and played at their tables did not--and do not--comprehend what they did or how anything worked.

What happened as early as the late 1970s is that these Baby Boomer and Joneser-aged gamers began copying the form of Dungeons & Dragons--Original, Basic, or Advanced--without knowing the function of the game's design. The few that did went and made a proper wargame (e.g. Traveller). The rest created things that looked like real games, but lacked one or more critical elements (e.g. The Mechanoids).

The wargame roots of RPGs, present at the creation of the hobby in the 1970s, came with a common body of knowledge and standard practices. As with the canon of fantastic adventure literature immortalized in Appendix N of the Dungeon Master's Guide for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition, this shared body of acumen was presumed to be communicable by exposure.

As with said literature, it turned out that this presumption was false. Those Boomers and Jonesers that found success early on, despite being Cargo Cultists, came to dominate the early discourse on what tabletop RPGs are and how they are played. Coupled with this was the rise of the Tournament Module, prefabricated adventure scenarios and campaigns, created for the specific confines of an in-person competitive tournament environment and later misapplied for home use.

These errors, promoted by a cohort that did not comprehend what they had, created the array of dysfunctions that I've written about this week and in the weeks before this. As I have said several times, these dysfunctions are born of incorrect presumptions regarding what tabletop RPGs are and how they work.

It is time once again to show generations of those that only know how to play RPGs wrong what playing them correctly looks like.

The Referee's Game Room (dramatized)

Working As Intended

A game must have two or more players. Each player has a Cause For Action that puts him in that scenario, an objective to pursue that defines his Win Condition, and at least one Loss Condition. Each player has limited resources, limited information, and imperfect conditions that constrain their actions. Play continues until one player hits their Win Condition or everyone hits their Loss Condition. A game, therefore, is a contest between multiple parties thas a defined beginning, middle, and end.

The tabletop RPG is meant to be played as a wargame hobby. Specifically, as stated over the week, using Kriegspiel's gameplay structure as its cornerstone. Therefore the base level of RPG play is not the boargame-like tactical skirmish scenario of the dungeon crawl, but rather the big-picture strategic level of play involving armies, economies, and institutions.

The structure of Kriegspiel is that of RPGs generally: each player takes the role of a major actor in the scenario. We call this figure a Patron, and the territory that they control a Domain. The Patrons give their orders to the Referee, who administers those orders and adjudicates the interactions prompted, and then reports the results to the Patrons. Patrons interact in pursuit of their objectives, free to collaborate or compete as they see fit in the manner of Diplomacy.

Braunstein is the origin of the dungeon-crawl level of play, in that this is a small-scale scenario. The scope of play is small and narrow. The scale of play is small, down to the individual figure on his own, but otherwise what is said of players at the Patron level applies here: they have specific Causes For Action, objectives that define Win and Loss Conditions, work with limited resources to do, have constraints to their actions, and may collaborate (or not) freely.

It is the interaction between these two scales of play wherein the RPG medium and hobby finds its magic. What happens at the macro influences the micro, and vice-versa.

From above to below, the most common influence is that it is the interactions of Patrons that generate the micro-level scenarios. Players playing on the micro level may be subordinates of Patrons, opportunist third parties seizing an opening, or some other party heretofore unknown to the campaign.

Some of these scenario-generated actions need not be direct conflicts; the simple act of expanding territory or exploring unknown lands can uncover Points Of Interest--often your typical dungeon locations--and early on in a campaign exploring these locations will be a regular source of action for ordinary adventurers and income for Patrons able to exert control over that territory. Later on they may become the foundation for new Patrons that arise from the adventurering cohort, taking these now-cleared locations as the basis for their own Domains.

From below to above, in addition to income of wealth and other resources, the micro level can influence the macro by being where a conflict between Patrons may be decided. A political marriage needs means that one or both parties needs to travel to make it final, making assassination or abduction a threat. Two armies arriving at a battlefield may yet jockey for advantage, represented by a micro-level skirmish, or be influenced by getting a third party to side for (or against) one of the belligerants. Intercepting a shipment of a special material needed for a Patron's plans could throw off everything and lead to a failure cascade- literal "For want of a nail...a kingdom was lost" possibilities here.

Having this two-tiered structure of play, wherein Patrons drive events in pursuit of their objectives and adventurers make use of opportunities that arise because of them, is the machine of perpetual gameplay in action. The Referee does not need to wreck himself constantly making maps, populating locations, inventing opposition forces, and so on; the Patrons will do most of that themselves, and other players can participate in this manner at the Referee's discretion.

Note that I just implied that the Patron players and the adventurer players are not the same people. This is intended. There is no obligation for a player to play at both levels. Those that want to be present at the table and go dungeon-delving, monster hunting, etc. need not be the players plotting the movements of armies, the function of economies, or the management of foreign relations with other powers.

This was never too much information for a Referee to manage. In the 1970s, a notebook and a wall or table to lay out maps (as well as some means to post or pin icons to them) was all that was required. Telephone calls, snail-mail, and in-person meetings to discuss affairs were easy enough to handle even for a campaign with a score of participants.

Today it is easier than ever to manage this. Email, text messaging, Direct Messaging over social media, Virtual Tabletop, etc. are all effective at handling the Referee's core administation duties.

However, it is Discord in particular that has proven to be a blessing for allowing participation at both levels of play from across the world; if you can connect to the Internet, you can use Discord (or something like it) and play in a proper RPG campaign at either level of play. No need for a Virtual Table Top or a web camera; you can even do without a microphone if you can type fast enough, and you can access Discord on a mobile device so you can put in your Patron's orders or play at the table even while in the middle of a trans-oceanic flight. (Playing from the International Space Station, while possible, may not be allowed.)

Therefore, this is what the flow over a week may look like:

• The Referee sends out a regular Campaign Update briefing to all participants. (The Referee may, if necessary, send specific players specific briefings that other players are not entitled to know about.) He reminds the participants on the deadline for downtime actions if they are to be done this week.
• The Referee gets downtime orders in and takes the time to plot them on the campaign map and calendar. Adjudications are done at this time. If a playable scenario arises, that is noted. Once this is done, any immediate (i.e. that week) results are reported; he puts forth viable table scenarios for the week and asks those players that are going to be at the table that week to decide:
  • What scenario will be played.
  • Which adventurers will be played.
• The Referee prepares for the table session. If it is already prepared for play, so much the better. Otherwise, the Referee prepares the location; the objectives will be set by the participating players.
• Table play is done, the results recorded, and the consequences levied--good and bad alike--for those involved and those concerned (i.e. not present, but influenced by the outcome).
• The results of all downtime and table actions are accounted for, the map and calendar updates, and the regular campaign report prepared for release.
• Campaign play continues on this loop until someone wins or everyone loses.

In addition to the rules and a set of dice (real or virtual) the Referee will need a map, a calendar, a means of communication, and a means of notetaking and keeping (this is why I recommend Discord). The Referee should also have redundancies for all of these, should one fail for some reason.

Conclusion

Most RPG designers are Cargo Cultists. Most RPG publishers are Cargo Cultists. They do not comprehend what they are doing, or how anything works, so their games don't work and their products are incomplete and often incoherent. It is unfortunate that we have had institutional incompetence afflicting this hobby for most of my nearly 50 years on this Earth.

More than a few RPG products--"storygame", "OSR", or whatever--are incompetently done, and therefore unfit for purpose; this includes a lot of flashy titles by equally flashy names, and it includes a lot of old-timers and sentimental favorites.

They are toys, not games, when they are not propaganda pieces or barely-veiled fetish fuel and the sooner this is admitted the better things will get. Like a lot of other things held back by Boomerism and Cargo Cultism, those will have to go before remedy can be effected far and wide.

In the meantime, looking for the signs of a proper game in a prospective RPG is going to be a necessary chore lest you be saddled with a crippled product that cannot help but to produce subpar and unsatisfactory gameplay. Value your time; don't play unfit RPGs no matter how popular they are.

If you want to see this put into practice, read the campaign reports of Jeffro Johnson, Macho Mandalf, BDubs, and others in the #BROSR. (You may enjoy Jeffro talking about it.)

In addition, I'm putting this into practice from scratch--see last Sunday's post--as I put a new campaign together.

The RPG medium and hobby is a simulation of history. Therefore you are making history, however fantastic the circumstances, and nothing else. Go forth and conquer.