Quarterling’s Corner

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...