Quarterling’s Corner

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 ...

  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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

VI. So the hidden context behind the last post is that I just had a weird and overwhelming creative experience. I've been watching a lot of Joel Haver on YouTube and, for a week or two, I felt really inspired to make a movie. My obsessive thought patterns, which for a few years now have not shut up about RPGs, shifted to movie-making instead. I paid for some video lessons on how to film with an iPhone, I bought a phone tripod, I bought some cheap lavalier mics, I started filming something with my friend and... Something in my stomach turned. I absolutely hated being on camera. I quickly stopped filming, went into a weird depressive funk for a day or two and almost right away I was back to thinking about RPGs. I'm still not really sure what it means. I still have to talk to my therapist about it! But I feel like, for a brief moment, I was ready to open up to something new... And then the rug was pulled out from under me. VII. The game starts and ends with a problem. There is no ...

I. Ruins & Rogues v2024_2   has a bug. Not something I'm just unhappy with, but something that straight up doesn't work as I intended it. I had in my head that monsters would be knocked out when they are reduced to exactly 0 Guard and 1 Health, but rules-as-written that is not what happens. I probably would have realized this was broken had I not been in such a rush to upload something that would fix v2024's broken combat. And I probably would have realized the combat was broken in v2024 had I done more playtesting before release. The problem is that I constantly feel pressure to keep updating the game because I have some twisted idea that, if I don't update it, people will think I'm a worse designer than I actually am. I know better now! The game has to reflect the very best of my design ability at all times! I'm not going to do that anymore. The game is not me. I need to let the damn thing go, at least long enough that when I come back to it I can see it w...

EDIT 12/2/2024: I am currently in the process of migrating some of the original congas.blog posts back to Quarterling's Corner so I can relaunch congas.blog as a more professional thing. Quarterling's Corner will remain online as a sort of scratch pad for less-focused thoughts like I'm used to blogging. My name is Tim and I design conversation games (or "congas"), which are more cumbersomely known as table-top role-playing games (TTRPGs). I am probably best known for Ruins & Rogues and for moderating the NSR Cauldron community on Discord. Why "congas.blog"? It was a dumb joke at first. "TTRPGs is a bad name. We should call them congas." But then I kept thinking about it, and it kept making me laugh, and I started to think, "Is this just stupid enough to stick?" "Congas" is a silly word. Everyone knows a conga is a drum. People will think you're joking if you say a conga is a game you play by having a conversation. I...

I. Introduction GNS theory is dead, but this post on the history of the Forge contains an interesting tidbit: As originally conceived, the rec.games.frp.advocacy threefold was based on the traditional RPG division of responsibilities between players and referees, and was proposed as a means of examining specific decisions on the part of a referee. It recognised three distinct criteria which a referee could use to make a call one way or another: Gamism , whereby the referee makes the call which they consider makes for the best gaming challenge for the players, Dramatism , whereby the referee makes the call which they consider makes for the best dramatic story, and Simulationism , whereby the referee tries to avoid metaplot considerations and come up with the ruling which makes logical sense based on the IC assumptions of the game world. An important point of the original model is that it assumed that people are not, by and large, consistent on this point; sometimes they’d favour syste...

This might be the dumbest idea I’ve ever had. Are you tired of three-to-five-letter acronyms such as “TTRPG,” “FKR,” and “PbtA” that are cumbersome to say out loud and convey little to no information about what they actually mean? Say hello to congas!  Congas is a new and fun way to talk about con versation ga mes, or congas for short! A conga is any game where the core mechanic is developing a fictional scenario through conversation. (And yes, before you ask, solo games count too — you’re having a conversation with the prompts the game is giving you!) Congas, as a system of talking about congas, only has three rules: You may only use a single, evocative, plain-language word to describe a genre of congas. Examples : Adventure congas, freeform congas, tactical congas. (Compound words or phrases like “soap opera conga” are permissible if they are sufficiently evocative.) You cannot  elaborate as to what a genre of congas is or means. Your one evocative word is the only means by ...

So after years of trying to design my perfect game, I finally have it in my hands... And what do you know, it turns out it's very similar to Maze Rats . Hell, its name is even made up of synonyms for "Maze" and "Rats." I didn't consciously set out to write a Maze Rats hack. This is just where I ended up. But why did I end up here, and if what I wanted was so similar to Maze Rats, why did I make a new game instead of just playing Maze Rats? I don't see many people talking about the actual rules of Maze Rats, I mostly see them talking about the tables, so this should be an interesting exercise. Similarities Before we analyze differences, let's take a look at what these games have in common. Both games use "control-panel" layout and fit their core rules on a two-page spread. Both games only use six-sided dice. Both games have quick character creation based on rolling PCs randomly. Both games use side initiative: on your side's turn, you ca...