Posts

Four facts a wizard might tell you

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Most of this is me trying to take this old post and rewrite it as in-world lore, but Fact #1 is an all-new idea. I. Everyone knows that magic spells are "slippery," such that a wizard who casts a spell immediately forgets how to cast it. But did you know that this phenomenon extends to the geography of the world itself? Indeed, the larger the area depicted on a map, the harder your mind must strain in order to understand it! For this reason, complete maps of the world's continents are exceedingly rare, although some claim to have completed them. I once knew a cartographer who believed continent maps would be just as easy to understand as local maps if not for the inscrutable meddling of some Great Cosmic Being, but I've since heard he was committed to an asylum. II. Wizardry is not so old a practice as you might think. The Golden Empire had its augurs and oracles, but the first proper wizard was Mysmak. A century later, people still blame Mysmak's prophecies for ...

BREAKING: Local man’s problems solved by zine

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  In June , I wrote the following about the common O/NSR assumption that PCs’ primary motivation is to help townsfolk and other friendly NPCs: The "problem," if there is one, is that you have to present a setting where all significant problems can be solved by a handful of strangers with swords. Let me give an example… I was designing an adventure where the PCs would fight a wizard who’s part of an oppressive regime, but then I kept thinking, “actually, if you’re trying to present a realistic world here, wouldn’t fighting this one wizard who’s part of this regime do absolutely nothing and maybe actually make things worse for the people who live here?” On Discord, RKaitz suggested… [I]f you're trying to help someone, it doesn't have to be that you're saving the whole country. You're just saving your spouse or village. No one else capable will care to do that, and so yeah, you're the only ones who can do the job. I thought that was a good point. But it was ...

The OSR and the struggle for power

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I. The unstated assumption at the core of the OSR is that the PCs are engaged in a struggle for power; or, to put it another way, the players' goal is to dominate the fictional setting in which the game takes place. I think this is fairly obvious to people at the micro-level; players understand that moment-to-moment dungeon-crawling is about killing monsters, taking their stuff, and in that sense "taking power" over the dungeon. But the macro-level, faction play, also depends on the assumption that PCs are struggling for power. We stack up factions in opposition to each other so that PCs can tip the balance one way or the other and hope to come out on top of the new social situation that results. You can dress up the struggle for power in nicer clothes — the PCs want power to help the innocent townsfolk, or they need money to pay off a colossal debt — but, at the bottom, you’re still indulging in the same power fantasy. II. In the early, massively-multiplayer days of Blac...

Analyzing three motivations for dungeon-delving

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1. You want wealth and power, fame and glory! It's hard to "be a fan of the player characters" when their only distinguishing motivation is "get rich." This is a feature if you want the PCs to be empty vessels who could die without the players being seriously disappointed. The bigger problem is: what do you actually do with the treasure? It's not much of a power fantasy if there's nothing to spend your heaping piles of gold on. In the olden days when D&D was an MMO (massively multiplayer off line), this wasn't a problem, because the point was just to be more powerful than all the other players. Money was endlessly useful because you always wanted to be at a higher level with a bigger army than everyone else. Nowadays people try to make domain-level play work in dedicated-table play, but without the competitive element of fighting other players (not to mention setting up your own dungeon to tax low-level players who want to explore it), it tends t...

Crunch, Grit, and Stick Theory

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This short post builds on three prior posts that I’m going to summarize as best as I can so you don’t have to read them: In “ Congas 101 ,” I laid the foundation for Crunch, Grit, and Stick Theory.  Crunchy games  focus on tactical combat.  Gritty games  focus on exploration and lateral thinking.  Sticky games  focus on keeping the story interesting. (This is basically the same as Brad Kerr’s “door D&D, fight D&D, and sticky fingers D&D,” but it’s more flexible: a game might be “sticky crunch” or “crunchy grit.”) In “ The Four Channels of Creative Constraints on RPGs ,” I defined four kinds of constraints that shape the way we play RPGs, three of which are relevant here:  Rules (what rules are you following?), Content (what have you prepared in advance?), and Principles (what advice does the GM follow when running the game?). In “ Dead Theory Necromancy ,” I analyzed different styles of play using the threefold model, which is a tool tha...

What is the NSR?

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Strictly speaking, the New School Revolution is school of game design. In spirit, the NSR is a community to be found on Discord at the NSR Cauldron . You can call your game “NSR” whether it follows the strict definition, it was inspired by the NSR community, or both. I. The NSR Strict Rules-light, content-heavy . The bulk of the rulebook consists of GM tools and/or random tables for character creation. The core rules might fit on just a couple pages. Lore-light, flavor-heavy . The setting is not explained, but implied through rules and tables. There is no canonical or correct interpretation of the setting outside of any given table playing the game. Story-light, problem-heavy . The GM decides what happens based on what makes for a consistent world and/or an interesting challenge, not what makes for a good story. Players must be creative and clever to solve weird problems with the weird tools their characters have at their disposal. II. The NSR Spirit The best game is the game you like ...

Congas 101

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A conversation game, or "conga" for short,  is a game you play by having a conversation. Most people call them "table-top role-playing games" or "TTRPGs," but "congas" is more fun to say. In 2024, the most popular congas tend to follow a cycle of conversation that looks roughly like this: First, the Game Master (GM) describes your character's situation. Second, you describe what action you want your character to take. Third, the GM decides and describes what happens next. Repeat. Modern congas tend to fall into one of three broad categories: crunchy, gritty, and sticky. Crunchy congas  focus on tactical combat. They're "crunchy" because they tend to involve "number crunching," i.e., doing math. Examples include Lancer , Fabula Ultima , and modern editions of Dungeons & Dragons . You might enjoy crunchy congas if... You enjoy a good tactical challenge in-game and the "lonely fun" of building out your chara...