Don't Worry About the Market

In a social media gaming group I moderate, one of the questions I see over and over again from aspiring designers is, “What kind of game should I make? What are people looking for right now? What genre is hot? What system should I design for?” I understand the question, because I asked it myself once. And someone gave me some advice that has stuck with me ever since: follow your heart, and the market will find you. Just make the thing that interests you. Make the weird game you wish somebody else would make. Make the adventure you would actually want to run. There is no crystal ball that will tell you what the RPG market will want by the time you finish the project, and if you do what everyone else is doing, you're probably just making a slightly worse version of something that already exists. Your enthusiasm and authenticity is the one of the few things you have that someone else doesn’t. 

Now, if you want to make money doing this, by all means, go for it. But go into it with your eyes open. The RPG business is precarious, and the anecdotal evidence I’ve seen suggests that the overwhelming majority of people who design games do not make a living from it. One guy who has published 20 games, some of which you’ve heard of, makes about $10,000 a year. Nothing to sneeze at, but not enough to live on. Even “full-time” RPG creators may be combining design with freelance work, Patreon, convention income, teaching, another business, or a spouse’s income. I can’t find enough reliable data to put a percentage on the number, but the people who actually make games and discuss it on various forums are consistent in saying that making a living exclusively from tabletop RPG design is the exception, not the rule. That’s not meant to discourage you. It’s meant to liberate you. You don’t have to build the next D&D. You don’t have to convince investors that your game will capture X percent of the market. You can make something small, strange, personal and affordable, and if fifty people love it, you've made something that didn't exist before. I did that, and while I don’t make enough to live on, I earn $80 to $250 bucks a month. That's not nothing, and I did absolutely no market research (or marketing, for that matter).

 

And please don’t use AI to make it. It’s getting harder to tell whether people are using AI to write, but it's still easy to tell when people are using it for art. AI can be a powerful tool for a starting point in research, and a fun toy for goofing around, but for publication, it’s the easy way out--the refuge of someone who, deep down, thinks they aren't talented enough, or who is a little lazy, and who wants the appearance of having made something without actually learning how or bothering to make it. I speak from experience here. I can actually draw fairly well, and even I was tempted to use AI art for a few products just to get it done quickly, because I was lazy and I wanted a result right now. I did this with my games BEAT and Top Men and I paid the price with some bad reviews. I pulled them from the market and I’m working on original art for them now. It was a good lesson: even if you don’t have an ethical problem with it, the community will likely crucify you. If you can’t draw, that’s fine. Neither can a lot of RPG designers. If you need art, public-domain material is your friend. Find old illustrations, engravings, photographs and decorative elements that you can legally use, then transform, collage, crop, recolor and recombine them into something that is actually yours. This isn't some kind of cheat: Johan Nohr's MÖRK BORG explicitly credits “a couple of Public Domain images” alongside his own graphic design and artwork, and his design for Into the Odd has even more. It’s also OK to copy the poses in pictures from old magazines--sports magazines, body building magazines, martial arts magazines, car magazines, and the icky ones aimed at “soldiers of fortune.” Lots of artists use real-life models, and that’s no different. And if you feel your art is too amateurish, remember the wonderfully crude illustrations in the earliest D&D books. The right audience doesn’t necessarily need polished corporate artwork. Sometimes they’d rather see evidence that an actual human being made the thing. 

As for layout and design, some people who do the writing and art themselves, but use AI for layout. This is, arguably, more appropriate. But it’s not that hard to learn some basic graphic design, and cost is not a factor. You can use GIMP, which is a free Photoshop-like program. Scribus is a free desktop-publishing program roughly like InDesign. You can learn typography and composition. It’s not like learning trigonometry. Any reasonably diligent person can use these programs. I worked in the newspaper business for 20 years, so I had a head start, but it’s not unlearnable. Even just a few hours with a tutorial should set you up for a lifetime. 

And remember, you don’t have to compete with the big boys. You probably can’t. You don’t need a warehouse full of books, a distributor, a printing contract, a marketing department or ten thousand dollars in startup funds, or physically attractive paid influencers to pimp your game. You can make a PDF and put it on DriveThruRPG or itch.io. They exist to support independent publishers uploading and selling their own PDFs and print-on-demand books, without the traditional publishing infrastructure. If you eventually need money for a print run or professional art, Kickstarter is there--but crowdfunding brings its own headaches, obligations and risks, so don’t assume it’s free money. And you don’t need it to make money. I never have. Just start small. Make the thing you want to make. Use inexpensive or free tools. Learn as you go. Yes, the indie RPG market sometimes looks like it’s been buried under an avalanche of well-intentioned but uninspiring products or AI-generated stuff, but that’s actually an opportunity for you to shine. Genuine human effort is obvious, and its imperfections make it authentic and special. You don't need to be the biggest game on the shelf. You just need to make something that somebody sees and thinks, “This was made by somebody who really cares about this.” That’s a market worth finding. You may not make much money, but I’ve made a little bit, and better yet, I’ve shared what’s in my heart with a niche group of like-minded people, got some recognition and creative validation, and made a few friends along the way. That’s better than money. 

When B/X Doesn't Tell You What to Roll

One thing that has puzzled me about B/X D&D since I was a kid is what you're actually supposed to roll when the rules don't tell you what to roll. I’ve seen people ask this in public forums and the answer is usually something along the lines of, “do whatever you want, you’re the DM.” And I get that. I’ve been doing whatever I want for some 40 years. But there is something to be said for investigating the best practices used by others, being internally consistent within your own games, and pondering what the designers’ intent was in the first place. 

Most readers are probably well aware there is no general “skill check” system in the main body of the rules. There is no universal list of skills that applies to everyone, and there isn't a rule saying that any time somebody tries something difficult, you make a Dexterity check or Strength check. But here's the funny thing: if you dig all the way to the back of Moldvay Basic, there actually is a rule for exactly this. Under “There's Always a Chance,” Moldvay suggests that the DM can have a player roll 1d20 against the appropriate ability score, with a bonus or penalty based on the difficulty. So the ability check isn't some later invention imposed on B/X from the outside. It's right there in the 1981 rules (although it seems like an afterthought). The difference is that it is presented as one of the DM's tools for dealing with situations the rules don't otherwise cover, not as the universal resolution mechanic that it eventually became.

The door rules are a good example of the other way B/X handles this. A normal dungeon door is often stuck or locked, and an unlocked but stuck door has to be forced open. Everybody gets a 1d6 roll, with a 1 or 2 succeeding, and the character's Strength adjustment modifies the target number. So a character with a good Strength score really does have a better chance of forcing the door. In other words, B/X uses ability modifiers to modify a d6-based chance when the rules specifically say to do so. What it doesn't say is that every generic 1-in-6 chance should automatically become a 2-in-6 chance for somebody with a +1 ability modifier. Secret doors, for example, are simply 1-in-6 for ordinary characters and 2-in-6 for elves. There is no instruction to add an Intelligence or Wisdom modifier to that roll. So as a DM, I think you can certainly decide that a particular 1-in-6 roll should be modified by an ability score, but I wouldn't claim that this is a general B/X rule. The precedent is there, but the universal rule isn't.

And then we get to the thief, which is where things get potentially out of whack. The Thief class was a later addition to the original pre-B/X rules, and that class alone uses a percentile system for special abilities. Suppose the party finds a locked door and the fighter says, “I'll pick the lock.” What happens? If I simply say, “Make a Dexterity check,” I've created a pretty ridiculous result. A first-level B/X thief has only a 15% chance to open a lock, while a character with a Dexterity of 13 would have a 65% chance if I'm using the Moldvay “roll under your ability score” rule with no difficulty modifier rule. The fighter is suddenly more than four times as good at the thief's special skill. So I can't just assume that every action that sounds appropriate to an ability score should be resolved with an ability check. The thief's Open Locks percentage is a specific procedure for a specialized activity. If you want the thief to matter, you have to respect that procedure. A non-thief might be allowed to attempt something clever with a lock--perhaps by dismantling the door, breaking the hinges, finding another way around it, or using some piece of equipment--but “I pick the lock” isn't automatically the same thing as “I make a Dexterity check.”

What's especially interesting, though, is that the fighter doesn't really have a corresponding list of things that only fighters can do. Everybody can force open doors. Everybody gets the benefits of Strength when doing so. Everybody can search for secret doors, everybody can listen at doors, and everybody can attempt plenty of ordinary physical actions. The fighter's special territory is overwhelmingly combat: better fighting ability, better weapons and armor, and the advantages that come from being the class built around hitting things. There isn't necessarily a noncombat action that belongs exclusively to the fighter. That makes me think the better way to look at B/X is not “every class has its own list of things it can attempt.” Instead, there are three different situations. Sometimes the rules give everybody a specific chance, like forcing a door. Sometimes they give a particular class a specialized procedure, like the thief's Open Locks percentage. And sometimes the rules don't say anything at all, in which case the DM has to make a ruling--possibly using Moldvay's ability-check rule.

And that, I think, is the real lesson. B/X doesn't assume that every uncertain action needs to be converted into a standardized check. Sometimes the answer is obvious and you don't roll. Sometimes the rules give you a specific roll. Sometimes the player's description of what he is doing changes the situation enough that the DM can simply make a ruling. And sometimes, yes, you roll under an ability score because Moldvay specifically gave you permission to do that. But I think the order matters: first decide what the character is actually doing, then decide whether a roll is necessary, and only then decide what kind of roll makes sense. If you start with “Which ability score do I roll against?” you can very easily end up making the character sheet more important than the circumstances of the situation--and, as the poor first-level thief demonstrates, you can accidentally make the wrong character the expert.

Of course, this is also one of the chief arguments against playing older editions in the first place. When the 3E team did their reboot a quarter-century ago, this must have been on their minds. There is a perfectly reasonable argument that it would be better to have one universal mechanic that handles everything consistently. I’ve made this argument myself. It is certainly easier to teach: whatever the character wants to do, find the appropriate ability, determine the difficulty, and roll the same kind of check. I'm not really arguing against that here. I'm not trying to prove that B/X's approach is better, because it’s not. I am asking, what does B/X actually do, and how do we run it without so many house rules that we’re effectively replacing it with a different game? If we're going to play an older edition on its own terms, then its rules gaps, its wonky procedures, and its unspoken assumptions are part of the game we're choosing to play. We can decide that we prefer a universal mechanic--and I do--but that's a different discussion from figuring out how the original game expects us to handle the situations it doesn't spell out.

Stop Rolling to Find the Clue

Here’s a mystery-solving rule I wish more RPGs would adopt: stop rolling to find the damn clues. If there's a bloody footprint on the floor, the players should be able to see the bloody footprint. If there's a letter in the dead man's desk, they should be able to find the letter. If there's something unusual about the murder scene, don’t make the players roll a Perception check (or whatever) to determine whether their characters notice. You built the mystery around that information. So give it to ‘em. 

I’m thinking about this a lot because I'm working on an RPG called Roosevelt’s Detectives, about a special squad of detectives working for Theodore Roosevelt in 1890s New York. I've been trying to figure out the best way to model mysteries in an RPG, and I keep coming back to the same idea: the mystery should be solved by the players, not by their dice. If the players search the victim’s room and roll badly, what exactly has been accomplished? I haven’t made the mystery itself more challenging. I’ve simply hidden the adventure from the people who are supposed to be playing it.

That doesn’t mean I want a game with no dice rolls. Quite the opposite. There are plenty of things a detective might attempt where failure is interesting. Can you get a nervous witness to talk? Can you identify an exotic poison? Can you convince somebody to let you examine the body? Can you establish that two pieces of evidence are connected? Those are great things to use dice for because the outcome could significantly change the story. But finding the evidence shouldn’t normally be one of them. Without the evidence, there is no story. Give the players the facts. Let them make the connections. Let them come up with the wrong theory. Let them accuse the wrong guy. That's where the actual detective work (and fun) happens.

So I think RPG mysteries work better when we stop treating information like a reward that has to be unlocked with a successful skill test of some sort. The players aren't watching a detective on TV. They are the detectives. If they search the desk, tell them what's in the desk. If they examine the body, tell them what they can see. Then get out of their way and see what they do with that evidence. Maybe they'll figure out who the murderer is. Maybe they'll completely mess it up. Either way, at least they solved--or failed to solve--the mystery. The dice shouldn’t do that for them.

AC: Up or Down, Who Cares?

There’s an old argument in the OSR about ascending versus descending Armor Class, and I’ve never quite understood why it sometimes gets treated as a mechanical argument instead of a taste argument. Of course, I’m a few decades late in weighing in on this one. Since I plan to run B/X D&D on our podcast in the future but use ascending AC (heresy!), this seems a good time to speak up. I grew up with descending AC, but I prefer ascending AC, simply because it makes more sense to me. I don't have to stop and do math in my head or look something up on a matrix--I roll, add my bonus, and see if I hit. It’s just my personal preference. I think it’s wrong to suggest, as grumpy old gamers sometimes do, that descending AC is superior in terms of game mechanics. It’s not. Descending or ascending, it all shakes out the same. 

In old-school D&D, AC is descending: unarmored is AC 9, leather is AC 7, chain is AC 5, plate is AC 3, and so on. Lower is better. In ascending AC, those numbers just go the other way: unarmored might be AC 10, leather 12, chain 14, plate 16. Higher is better. I have absolutely no problem with somebody preferring descending AC. If you grew up with it, like I did, it feels like D&D. If you like the old terminology, the old character sheets, or compatibility with old adventure modules and bestiaries, that's perfectly fine. But I don't think there's any inherent mechanical advantage to it. You're basically taking the same numbers and turning them upside down.

And yes, before somebody points it out, I know there's an apparent contradiction in Old School Essentials, one of the most popular clones of old D&D. It defaults to descending AC, but offers an ascending option. OSE's old-school attack matrix, its THAC0 formula, and its ascending-AC system don't produce exactly the same probabilities at the extreme ends of the matrix, and at first, I thought this meant I was wrong. But when I do the math (not always easy for me, I admit) that's not evidence that descending AC is somehow mathematically better. It's a quirk of the old attack matrix. Because the matrix has to deal with the fact that you're rolling a d20: when to hit would require something higher than a 20, the table just says 20; and at the other end, it bottoms out at 2 because a natural 1 always misses. So you can get a tiny difference between what the old matrix says and what the straight formula would say. That's interesting, and worth pointing out, but it has nothing to do with whether AC goes up or down. It's a quirk of the table. It seems to me you could build an ascending system with exactly the same quirk.

And that's really where I think the argument gets muddy--confusing "I like it better" with "it is objectively better." If somebody tells me, "I prefer descending AC because it feels better," I'm not going to argue with them. If they tell me, "I've been playing this way for thirty years and I don't see any point in changing," fine. If seeing AC 2 on the character sheet makes the game feel like D&D in a way that AC 18 doesn't, I understand that. But those are arguments about taste, aesthetics, and nostalgia. They're not mechanical arguments. Descending AC wasn't invented because some clever primordial nerd discovered that making the numbers go downward produced better combat. It was simply the way the original game represented the numbers, and some folks have been carrying that around ever since. Sometimes the OSR has a tendency to assume that because a rule is old, there must be some profound design wisdom behind it.  But sometimes an old rule is just an old rule.

To be clear, I'm not arguing that ascending AC is better. That's not even remotely my point. If you like descending AC, use descending AC. I like plenty of old-school "legacy affectations" myself, and I certainly don't think every modern design is an improvement. All I'm saying is that there's nothing inherently superior about AC 2 compared to AC 18. Armor Class is just a number representing how difficult something is to hit. We can make that number go up or make it go down, and the game works just fine either way. Like descending AC all you want. Just don't confuse liking it with having discovered a mechanical advantage.

And by the way, if you want to convert traditional descending AC to ascending AC, just subtract the old AC from 19. AC 5 becomes AC 14, AC 3 becomes AC 16, AC 0 becomes AC 19. That's basically the whole trick.

You Can't Do Accents? That's OK.

There is a particular kind of player who can apparently do any accent on command. I can do a handful of voices that are passable accents, but if you put me on the spot and ask me to do a convincing South African or Liverpudlian or Malaysian accent, I’ll sound like a Midwestern American with a speech impediment. And you know what? That's OK.

Despite what you may think from Critical Role or Dimension 20, you don't need to be an actor to play an RPG (nor do you have to be good-looking, but that’s another post). We’re trying to keep track of initiative, adjudicate the rules, describe the room, remember what happened three sessions ago, and keep the adventure moving. Now we're supposed to be Meryl Streep, too? Besides, some of the most successful actors in the world have built entire careers without using different voices. Clint Eastwood is Clint Eastwood in pretty much everything. Bruce Campbell has a little more range, he’s always clearly Bruce Campbell. Harrison Ford has played a wide variety of characters, and yet Indiana Jones, Han Solo and plenty of his other characters still sound like Harrison Ford. Nobody seems to mind. So why should your players or your GM?

The trick is to stop thinking about doing an accent and start thinking about giving a character a voice. You don't have to sound French. You just have to sound different enough that everyone knows they're talking to the French guy.

Change Just One Thing: This is probably the most useful trick of all: don't try to change everything. Pick one thing and exaggerate it slightly. Maybe this character talks very slowly. Maybe they talk extremely fast. Maybe they pause before answering every question. Maybe they speak very quietly or much louder than everyone else. Maybe every sentence sounds like a question. Maybe they carefully pronounce every word. You can create a completely different character without changing your accent at all. Once you've established the voice, you don't have to work very hard to maintain it. If the bartender always talks slowly, the players will recognize him the next time he appears. If the halfling thief always talks too quickly and too much, you don't have to remind anyone who it is (I’m looking at you, Marm). The group will do the remembering for you.

That trick applies to accents, too. I've picked up the following tricks from various sources over the years, and I freely admit that they are more theatrical than accurate. That's fine. We're not trying to win an Oscar. We're trying to make the players go, "Oh! This guy's German." Sometimes that's all you need.

Just Speak Properly: Let's start with the easiest and most common one: British. You can't do British? Don't. Just speak clearly. Slow down a little. Enunciate your words. Finish your consonants. Use slightly more formal language. Instead of "Uh, I dunno," try "I'm afraid I couldn't say, old boy." Congratulations. You're British now. Well, no, you aren't. But this is one of the cool things about accents: the listener’s brains will do the work for you. You don't need to reproduce a real British accent. You need to give them enough so that they can imagine one. Of course, we’re talking posh British. For a Cockney accent, flatten your vowels and drop some consonants. Or just call everyone "guvnah." It’s not perfect, but it’s close enough for a tabletop RPG. 

You can do the same thing with other accents. I've been told that hitting your consonants harder can give you a glimmer of South African. Try changing what you do with your R's. Don't pronounce them at all, pronounce them very strongly, or roll them a little. You can play with TH sounds, too. Turning some TH sounds into something closer to Z or S can give you a useful French or German flavor. None of these tricks is likely to fool even a casual listener, let alone a native speaker, but that's not the point. They’re just little bits of stagecraft that give your friends’ ears something to grab onto.

Change the Rhythm: Changing the rhythm of your speech may actually be more useful than changing individual sounds. A character who speaks very slowly feels different from one who rattles off every sentence. A southern American character can be suggested by slowing down and stretching the vowels. An Italian character can have a more musical rise and fall to the voice. An Irish character can have a noticeable bounce or lilt. A Russian or Eastern European character might speak in a more controlled, deliberate way, with hard consonants. A stereotypical New Yorker might speak quickly and forcefully. Again, these are just theatrical impressions. The important thing is that rhythm is easy to hear. You can forget exactly how you were supposed to pronounce a particular vowel. You're much less likely to forget, "Oh yeah, this guy talks really slowly."

Your Group Will Help You: Here's perhaps the biggest difference between acting and running an RPG: an actor has to convince an audience. A GM has players who, like Fox Mulder, want to believe. That's a huge advantage. If you say, "The old man speaks with a thick French accent," and then give the old man a slightly nasal version of your normal voice, your players will probably hear a French accent. They aren't sitting there scoring you. Give them something to work with and they'll fill in the rest.

You can even tell them what you're attempting. "This guy is supposed to be German. I can't actually do German, so I'm going to do this." Then do your terrible German accent. That's it. The players now know what you intended, and they'll meet you halfway. In fact, admitting the trick can make it more fun. "My character is from Scotland. I can't do Scottish, but I'm going to roll my R's and talk really fast." Now everyone knows what they're listening for, and you can stop worrying about whether you're doing it correctly.

Don’t Forget the Words: Here's a trick that has absolutely nothing to do with accents: change the words. An educated wizard might say, "I'm afraid that would be inadvisable," while the local thug might say, "That's a bad idea, mate." Even with the same accent, it sounds like a completely different person. This is where I think the idea of "doing voices" gets a little misleading. What we're really trying to do is communicate character. Sometimes the best voice for an NPC is just your normal voice with different vocabulary and attitude.

Change Your Mouth: Another useful trick is to change the physical way you speak. Try talking with your lips pushed forward. Try barely opening your mouth. Try keeping your jaw tight. Try moving your lips more than usual. Your voice will change automatically. Pitch helps, too. You don't have to become Kermit the Frog. Just move your voice a little higher or lower than normal. Maybe the ancient wizard has a surprisingly high, dry voice. Maybe the assassin speaks in a deep monotone. Maybe the enormous badass fighter has an ironically soft, gentle voice. In fact, contrasting a character's appearance and voice can be more memorable than a perfectly appropriate voice.

One Last Trick: This is actually my favorite trick and it always works for me. Try doing an impression of a particular celebrity, but don't tell anyone who you're doing. This is especially useful if you're terrible at impressions. You probably won't sound much like the intended celebrity, but you won’t sound like you. And sometimes that's all you need. You may not have successfully become Christopher Walken, but if you've accidentally created a weird little voice that isn't your normal voice, congratulations: you've succeeded.

Save vs. Death: Maybe Your Character Shouldn't Die

One thing I’ve never quite made up my mind about in the OSR is the enthusiasm for extremely low hit points and extremely lethal gameplay. On one hand, I understand the appeal. If your fighter has 6 HP and the ogre can kill you in one hit, you have a very good reason not to fight the ogre. You scout, you plan, you set traps, you look for another way in, and you learn that “we can probably win this fight” is not necessarily the same thing as “we have to fight this fight.” That’s good stuff. It makes combat a choice instead of the assumed solution to every problem.

I’m an older gamer myself (54) and I’ve watched this hobby go through enough editions and fashions to recognize a particular kind of argument often made by gamers my age. There are plenty of us who look at newer games and complain about “power gaming,” “player aggrandizement,” or characters who are simply too capable, and sometimes that turns into sweeping complaints about younger players and what’s supposedly wrong with gaming these days. I don’t want to make that argument in reverse. I’m not interested in saying that newer games have made characters too powerful, or that players today need to be mentally tougher, or that we somehow had better games because our characters died more often. I think that kind of generational gatekeeping is mostly tedious and embarrassing. And honestly, I have a hard time believing that anyone who is genuinely happy with how their life turned out spends much time worrying about how younger people play pretend with their friends. My questions are about game design itself, not about what kind of gamer is playing it. 

I think the problem is that there’s a point where character vulnerability stops producing interesting decisions and starts producing disposable characters to no dramatic purpose. A character dying can certainly be a meaningful consequence, but it can also just mean that six or ten or twenty sessions of character development gets thrown away and you roll up Blargon the Fighter II. If that’s because of foolish play, fine, but a bad die roll shouldn’t permanently end a great character, and I don’t buy the argument that it’s “realistic.” Death from cancer, car wrecks, and other rolls of the dice are common enough in real life. In a game about dragons, don't talk to me about realism. I’m not convinced that “too bad, make another character” is inherently more legitimate than what might have happened to Blargon if he had survived. There’s a difference between making players wary of consequences and making characters disposable for the sake of some nebulous old-school principle. 

In fact, I think there are fates more interesting than death (and in many systems, there are detailed mechanisms for this, but these tend to be a little heavier than I like). A character who survives the dragon fight but loses an eye, their sword, half their friends, and their reputation might have a much more interesting story ahead of them than a character who simply takes 9 damage and dies. Capture, injury, mutilation, lost equipment, ruined relationships, enemies made, objectives failed--these can all make a player find a creative way around a fight. I don’t think the goal should be to make characters safe, but to make failure more interesting than “you’re dead.”

So I’m not sure I’m actually opposed to low hit points or lethal combat per se. I think what I’m questioning is the assumption that character death is automatically a “proper” consequence, or that believing so is somehow proof of a more robust, masculine approach to roleplaying. Risk is good. Fear is good. Failure is good. Consequences are very good. But death is a specific consequence, and sometimes it feels like the least interesting one. If the threat of death makes players think creatively, great. But if the primary result is simply that we keep generating new first-level fighters to show how old-school we are, I’m not sure what we’ve gained.

World-Building Without a Building Permit

Before I get started, I want to make clear that this isn’t a “grognard hates narrative games” post. Quite the opposite. I love narrative play. Our group will sometimes play an entire session without rolling the dice at all, and we usually love it. We talk to NPCs, argue among ourselves, investigate something, make plans, or just follow whatever strange conversational rabbit hole we find ourselves in. That’s one of the things I love about RPGs. 

What I’ve noticed, though, is a trend in newer games toward codifying some of those things that traditionally happened outside the rules: collaborative world-building, interpersonal arguments, relationships, emotional conflicts, and even the process of establishing facts about the setting. Games like The Quiet Year, Fate, or Cortex Prime take various approaches to this, and I can certainly see the appeal. Rules for narration can give everyone a chance to participate, prevent the loudest person at the table from becoming the de facto author, and create prompts to get things moving when a group might otherwise stare at a proverbial blank page. Depending on how you like to play, then formalizing those things may be the right choice. I’m not trying to argue that people shouldn’t enjoy these games. If they produce the experience you want, great.

What I find myself wondering, though, is why many games increasingly seem to assume that everything interesting that could occur during an RPG needs to become a game mechanic. In our group, collaborative storytelling and dramatic interaction just happen. There is a difference, to my mind, between rules that facilitate roleplaying and rules that regulate roleplaying. Combat needs rules because we need some impartial way to determine whether the fighter hits the monster. But if my character insults the duke, I’m not convinced we necessarily need an “argument resolution system.” I can insult the duke, the GM can decide how the duke reacts, and then we can have an actual argument. Likewise, I don’t think collaborative world-building necessarily needs a specific procedure. A game can certainly say, “anyone can add something to the setting,” without saying, “on your turn, you must establish one new fact about the setting.” The latter risks putting people on the spot, especially if they’re shy or not very creative. I’m much more interested in rules creating situations that give us something to roleplay about than rules telling us how to roleplay once we get there.

This is especially true of world-building. I think some of the best world-building in a long-running campaign happens almost accidentally, through accumulation. Everyone realizes that the party has been to the same bar three times, so eventually the bar gets a name. Then the bartender gets a name, then a personality, then maybe a family, then a problem, and six months later that bartender is somehow an important NPC. Nobody sat down and collaboratively designed him. The world acquired detail naturally, over time. The same thing can happen with history, geography, relationships, and all sorts of other things. Collaborative world-building certainly can be a deliberate activity, and I enjoy games that make it a major part of the game. But I don’t think such collaboration can really be forced, and I think it can feel unnatural or contrived if a group tries to do it before the game actually starts. If everyone at the table is comfortable contributing, it will happen naturally over time. And if they aren’t, giving them a rule that says they must contribute doesn’t necessarily make them more creative or more comfortable.

Over 40+ years of gaming, I’ve learned that my preference is for leaving some parts of an RPG deliberately “unmechanized.” Rules are useful when we need them to resolve uncertainty, settle disagreements, or create interesting challenges. But I don’t think every part of the experience needs to be converted into a procedure simply because we could make a procedure for it. There is something valuable about trusting the people at the table to talk, imagine, improvise, argue, invent, and occasionally surprise one another without consulting a subsystem. That is just my own preference--I certainly don’t think it should be some objective law of RPG design, and if a friend wanted to run a game with mechanized world-building and narration, I’d play it. In fact, I can understand perfectly well why someone would prefer a game where those things are explicitly supported by the rules. But more and more, I find myself increasingly convinced that an RPG can have rules for playing the game while leaving some room for the people playing it to simply…play.