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My new game, Wanderer, is heading to Backerkit in mid-April. Check it out!

[roleplayolyhedrons]

Simulating the World (Pt. 1)

I might as well confess from the beginning that I did not grow up playing tabletop (pen and paper) role-playing games. I was a war gamer from an early age. I played behind grand armies, rolling dice to decide the fate of entrenched enemies, and even my soldiers, for that matter. I came to role-playing games at a critical juncture in my own life—a time when I was bored with war games and needed some form of mental stimulation that went beyond what television and video games could offer me at the time. Role-playing games, to me, signify a significant step in a process of self-exploration through games and gaming—a sort of natural progression from one gaming genre, such as war games, to the next, role-playing games.

Mage Knight

I roll the dice—they’re high numbers—what exactly, I can’t recall after nearly fifteen years. Probably a six and a five on the six-sided dice. All kill shot, I remember. I also remember the ugly orange carpet of the room and the dozen or so people crammed into the tiny spare room in my junior high school. My opponent’s face, a fuzzy, easily forgotten face, scowls at the loss of her Mage Knight miniature, her prized soldier on the battlefield. She removed the plastic warrior from the table, which is decorated with sand table terrain—i.e., stone masonry structures, such as fortified walls, square towers,m and sagging buildings with thatched rooves all of which are fashioned from painted soda box cardboard. I’m winning at a game that is, at its heart, very much like chess, although it’s different. In other words, it’s hard to say it tastes like chicken, when, in fact, it isn’t chicken, doesn’t even come close, in many respects. The endgame is the same as chess: Kill off your opponent’s pieces until s/he capitulates. It’s a game my pubescent self prefers over chess because of the options available to one playing the game. No more strict movements on an undecorated board. The pawns of war move in ways that chess pieces only dream of, duking it out over neatly modeled sand table terrain. Dice rolls act as the great equalizer, as much as a good strategy. (And good strategy doesn’t hurt either.) Chess, after playing Mage Knight, feels anachronistic and tastes bland.

There’s a catch to playing Mage Knight: I have to keep it secret because it is one of those things forbidden in my household. It’s far too similar to a game called Dungeons & Dragons in my father’s eyes. When he finds out that I want to play this game with my friends, and on a Sunday of all days, he flips out. My old man decides the best punishment is to force me to read aloud Bible passages. He thinks, hopes, that this activity will purge, scrub away with an intellectual version of a wire brush, any interests I have in such games. My father hands me an old Bible and says, “Here, read this. Make sure I can hear you reading this from in the living room.” I ask him why. He says, “Because I told you to. Now read!” My father truly believes the rumors and theories surrounding the connections between devil worship and suicide among those who play games like Dungeons & Dragons. This is strange to me. My father doesn’t treat my younger brother in the same way. He can play with his friends on a Sunday, and so can my sister. Instead of playing with my friends, instead of playing a harmless game of Mage Knight, I read from Judges, and the fantastical stories from this part of the Bible only serve to kindle my interest in playing out such stories in game form. I can almost imagine reenacting the battles with my miniatures, bought with earned and stolen quarters, all in the name of G-d.

War Games

Military modeling and simulation is the technical term for what hobbyists call war gaming. M&S, as it is more commonly known, has been around for millennia. Human beings, from ancient Egyptian pharaohs to Mesopotamian kings to Prussian military officers have all tried to simulate combat without the risk associated with actual warfare. The answer to this dilemma of simulating a part of the real world was not what we would call LARP-ing—live-action role-playing—, complete with mock swords and shields and cheesy acting to boot. Instead, ancient and modern civilizations alike developed board games using intricate and not-so-intricate playing pieces, along with wooden, clay, or stone boards. What started as a training tool for the ruling and military elite soon became a pastime of those who had little interest or knowledge in the affairs of war and peace.

War games are a permanent staple of modern-day gaming hobbies. Popular war games fill the shelves of big box stores and hobby and specialist shops alike. Entire conventions are dedicated to the wargaming hobby in the civilian world. Names like Avalon Hill, Games Workshop, and Fantasy Flight Games (FFG), conjure up images of miniature warriors duking out over sand table real estate. Players rely on dice and pre-established statistics to determine the odds of combat and movement on the board. In some cases, war games are quite elaborate, with miniatures, realistic, war-torn landscapes, and complex formulas as part of the overall gaming experience. However, other war games are quite simple, with said games being fashioned from inexpensive cardboard cardstock or plastic tokens. Nevertheless, whether it is elaborate war games or cheap cardboard ones, many civilians know war gaming simply as a hobby they love and spend countless hours on. Few know about the origins of war gaming, the grandfather of role-playing games, especially when it comes to its political and military origins.

War games have been around for as long as human beings have fought wars against one another. Such games offer players a chance to experience combat against an opponent without the risks associated with real war. War games, like chess and Go, have become permanent fixtures of the civilian world, as ultimate games of strategy, patience, and mental endurance. Entire libraries have been written on games like chess. However, the war game as we know it is a relatively modern invention. The wargaming hobby is in debt to the likes of Prussian military strategists, who first developed and used the game Kriegsspiel (i.e., literally “war game”) to train military officers in strategy and tactics. This pedagogical method is pregnant with possibilities and problems. Officers, and even the political elite, are better able to get a grasp of combat, which is fraught with unknowns, unknowns that must be anticipated by the commander in question. These same games, however, can create a sort of myopia within those who play them, allowing the officers in question to believe they are best prepared for the situation at hand, when, in fact, they haven’t.

Jackson Kicked My Ass

I’m at my friend’s, Jackson’s, house, an old riverfront Victorian. Jackson is this tall, lanky character, with combed hair, a goofy smile, and the mouth of a sailor on shore leave. We’ve brought together a collection of Warhammer 40K miniatures my grandmother, on my father’s side, bought for me, along with some old hardbound books, clean coffee mugs, and a handful of six-sided dice. The books and cups serve as ad hoc terrain, the best we can come up with, considering the circumstances. Cups serve as towering mountains, and the books are grand mesas, tableland on some alien desert world. The books and cups are organized in such a way that the middle of the table is the narrowest point, with the top and bottom ends widening out enough to allow for our troops to be placed in their start positions. I play a small squad of Space Marines. Jackson plays a squad of Tyranids, an alien insectoid-like race. We’re using our own rules this time because I’ve forgotten the rulebook at home, which is hidden from my father’s prying eyes. I position my Space Marines in a firing line, just before the narrowest point on the table, getting ready for Jackson’s insectoid swarm. Once it’s his turn, he unleashes his horde, charging toward my Space Marines. Both sides are equally matched, considering. It’s my turn again. I roll to fire on the Tyranids, killing three off the bat. Jackson curses under his breath. It’s his turn again. His alien horde attacks my Space Marine line, full force. He rolls and kills two of my Space Marines. It’s my turn again. I find that my Space Marines are in an optimal position. Jackson’s troops are being bottle-necked by the terrain and my soldiers are ready to take them on. I decide to roll an attack against Jackson’s troops. I roll low, really low. So low, it is laughable now that I think about it, some fifteen years later. Jackson laughs. It’s one of those laughs that sounds like monkeys fighting one another over forage. He knows his troops are safe, for now. It’s his turn. He rolls for attack, and he manages to kill four of my courageous Space Marines. I wince as this takes place. Jackson feels victory coming.

“You ready to surrender, bitch?”

“Fuck you, man,” I retort.

“You kno’ I’m gonna fuckin’ win,  bro. Just admit it.”

“Fuck off, Jackson.”

It’s my turn. I roll. Again, the numbers aren’t in my favor. I don’t manage to kill or wound any of Jackson’s horde, which appears to be more ferocious than it did a few minutes ago.

I move my Space Marines back some, giving myself breathing room. Jackson moves closer. I roll for an attack, and I only manage to kill one of his hordes. I feel the sweat dripping off my brow, my hands are shaky, and my heart rate is through the roof. I can’t let this cocky fucker win, I think to myself. Jackson moves in for the kill. He manages to finish off the remainder of my Space Marine squad. In my mind, I can hear the shrill screams of grown men being torn apart by an alien horde. They cry out for their God-like emperor to save them, but their cries fall on deaf ears.

Jackson’s smiling at the end, all of his front teeth, pearly whites even in the dim light, are showing. He reaches over to shake my hand. I take it.

“No hard feelin’s, bro?”

“Sure, no hard feelings.”

“Another round, dude?” Jackson asks.

I nod, and we begin setting up our soldiers on opposite ends of the table for another battle.

[roleplayolyhedrons]

Made a rough intro to TTRPGs over on YouTube.

[roleplayolyhedrons]

Murder, Inc.

Author’s Note: While the following essay is goofy, a bit edgy, and focuses on the catharsis of violence, roleplaying games, for me, have always held a special place in my heart, something of a wake-up call compared to other games I’ve played. When you’ve played a tabletop roleplaying game, it’s hard to go back and play Chess with its bland player choices and resource management.

High school is the testing ground for our adult selves. It’s a time of hormones, acne, and going through the bureaucratic channels that make up public school education. For me, high school was all about gaming. I couldn't care less about the homework or sports. My high school experience was split between two high schools. I started high school in southern Colorado, where I played Mage Knight, MechWarrior, and Warhammer tabletop games at the local community center or high school or on a friend’s kitchen table. During the spring semester of my freshman year, I started attending school in Dulce, New Mexico. For the first few months, I had little to do to pass my time. To me, Dulce didn’t have much to offer.

Dulce is located on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation. It’s this little no-name place in northern New Mexico, where the Archuleta Mesa towers over a semi-arid mountain valley. The town is centered around the tribal buildings and businesses, which hug Highway 64 like plaque on arterial walls.

What I knew about Dulce came from two sources: Our neighbors, Tom and Pam, found their dog, Dulce, in Dulce, New Mexico. They always retold the story when we visited their B&B. I also remember hearing about Dulce concerning cattle mutilations in the late-1970s. The cattle mutilations were Dulce’s claim to fame. The History Channel aired a documentary on the mutilations when I was younger, with the narrator pronouncing the town’s name as “Dulch-eh, New Mexico.” Locals claimed that UFOs or the government were responsible for cattle being surgically sliced and diced. Conspiracy theorists blamed it on the Dulce Base, a sort of Area 51 military base rumored to be located under Archuleta Mesa.

We moved to Dulce after my parents decided to end their nightmarish take on June and Ward Cleaver. My father kept the house and our animals in southern Colorado. My mother took the three of us kids to Dulce, where she worked as an underpaid math teacher. The first months in Dulce were pretty damned boring. We still went to school in Pagosa Springs. This required that we commuted every morning to Chromo, Colorado to catch a school bus at 6:00 or 6:30. We were back home around 4:30 or 5:00, only to eat, watch some T.V., and finish whatever homework we had before going to bed. This continued until my mother decided it was time to enroll us in school in Dulce.

My siblings loved Dulce. My brother played sports and worked for the school. He later told my mom that playing sports in Dulce kept him from dropping out of high school. My sister played volleyball, hung out with friends, and watched Gilmore Girls every day at 3 p.m. She liked Dulce because it allowed her to be independent of my father, who could be a real hard ass.

For me, Dulce didn’t have the stuff I was used to. My classmates weren’t interested in old-school games. They played Xbox and PlayStation. I preferred dice and paper to television screens and controllers. I spent the better part of two months dinking around the small apartment my mom rented from the school district. I’d come home from school and watch T.V., eating copious amounts of Cheerios and Frosted Flakes with copious amounts of milk.

My taste in extracurricular activities worried my mother. She wasn’t exactly in a stable state of mind when we moved to Dulce. Her marriage of sixteen years was coming to a fiery end, complete with a major custody battle waged by two different states. She pulled extra hours to pay for an apartment, the increased appetite of her children, and a divorce lawyer. Dulce, New Mexico was not home for my mother, who’d grown up in rural North Dakota. North Dakota was the land of nice neighbors and friendly faces. It also happened to be a place where your dollar went further. To my mom, Dulce was the closest place she’d come to living and working in a warzone. Student suicides, crime, and poverty were a permanent staple of Dulce, or so she told us. She wanted to keep her kids away from all of that. She wanted to keep us away from the despair that many locals experienced when living in Dulce.

My mother’s anxieties led her to find outlets for my energy. These included going to afterschool programs or practicing Jiu Jitsu with Mr. B., our family friend, and a high school history teacher. However, these activities weren’t exactly what I was looking for. It took a series of fistfights with my little brother and bending the shit out of a metal door to our apartment before Mr. Boucher told me to meet up with a guy named Howe. He said Howe knew of something that’d interest me.

Howe worked for the Jicarilla Apache Department of Education (JADE) and wore clothes that fit the likes of a Mormon missionary rather than a day-in and day-out video tech guy. He filmed official tribal events and lectures for the tribal government. Howe occasionally worked on the odd bits of computer and film equipment that he stashed away in his JADE office. Howe’s office in the JADE building was about the same square footage as a small dorm room. The office was filled to maximum capacity with computers, video equipment, shelves, and milk crates holding Howe’s gaming books. There was no organizing principle behind the clutter of computers, cables, and cameras. It was like a squirrel’s stashed-out nut collection, with odd pieces stashed behind cabinets or stacked on top of bloating shelves. He lived on the Reservation as well; he was married to a Jicarilla Apache woman and had a son who went to school in Dulce. Howe also belonged to an earlier generation of roleplaying gamers. His generation started playing socially conservative games like Dungeons & Dragons, escalating their gaming fix to the hardcore, morally ambiguous stuff such as Shadowrun, Vampire the Requiem, Werewolf, and Paranoia.

It was through Howe’s influence that I discovered the seedy underworld of old-school roleplaying games. They were the kinds of games my father warned me about. My father saw Dungeons & Dragons as a portal of evil that could possess impressionable minds. I have no idea where he got this idea. I am sure this opinion was lifted from the pages of some Chick comic, where evil Dungeon Masters corrupt the souls of innocent children. I ignored my old man’s warnings and decided to jump into the world of roleplaying games. I had nothing else better to do. Little did I know, I was giving up every afternoon to commit murder, armed robbery, and aggravated assault while having fun with it all.

The first game I played with Howe and his coworker, Dylan, was a homebrew version of Shadowrun. The game was a blank spot in my mind. I’d never heard of it, nor had I heard about things like cyberpunks and corporatocracies that filled the game’s rulebook. I wasn’t used to the game mechanics either. I spent the better part of two and a half hours creating my character from scratch, rolling dice, answering questions, and choosing traits, quirks, flaws, etc. This was not due to some overly elaborate character creation system imposed by the game’s rulebook. Howe liked modifying his roleplaying games, adding bits here and there, and stealing from online forums and fan websites. The final character sheet consisted of intricate formulas, lists, and spreadsheets that Howe used in his role as Game Master, a sort of storyteller with god-like authority over the game world.

There are two types of Game Masters. There are those Game Masters who take pity on their players and offer a helping hand. Story, all-around fun, and leisurely gameplay are key to these Game Masters’ modus operandi. Then there are those Game Masters who view their players as mere mortal playthings, who are to be bound and beaten in every imaginable way. Howe belonged to the second Game Master archetype. Howe’s gamemastering technique took a page from the “Monkey’s Paw.” Be careful what you wish for. He had a way of making fate, gravity, and the dice come crashing down on our party. His thugs were better equipped. The police were always a step ahead of us. Bullets hurt and so did explosions. Being captured or arrested meant brutal interrogations bordering on torture. Every roll of the dice brought silent prayers and paranoia-induced mutterings. High rolls were met with hollering—all-around jubilation and high-fiving. Low rolls brought pale faces and globs of sweat and hope that our characters hadn’t stumbled into the starry beyond.

The first gaming session started simply: Dylan and I were hired to steal some corporate tech for a faceless, nameless client of the shadows. However, this heist led to an accidental kidnapping and death, which precipitated several gun battles with corporate guns and police organizations. In turn, this led to higher body counts and more enemies.

As we moved across the post-apocalyptic United States, the bodies piled up like cordwood. Thousands died. Dylan and I were like a two-man meat grinder. People came in one end and bullet-riddled or mutilated flesh came out the other. It gave me a certain high that couldn’t be matched anywhere else. I kept going to JADE to get my fix of mayhem and destruction. On days we couldn’t meet, I felt like I was going through withdrawals. I needed to roll dice and kick ass.

We’d snuffed out a group of homeless with a one-two combination of foam grenade with an incendiary chaser. The people frozen in the foam didn’t have a chance. After killing off a group of homeless people, we’d stumbled into a fight with corporate security goons. The incident ended with our arrest and subsequent interrogation. The interrogation lasted half a gaming session and included various methods of torture conjured up by Howe. Based on that session alone, I can only conclude that Howe must have been an ex-Stasi or KBG agent in a former life. Again, it was his way of bringing down every force imaginable on our heads.

Another incident involved a brief gun battle with hospital security—and to this day I still have no idea what we were doing in the hospital. My character was attempting to toss a flash bang into the hospital waiting room, when Howe made me roll a handful of six-sided (D6) dice. My dice roll was low. Howe smiled and rolled a few dice of his own. He chuckled. Rolled twice more in secret. The whole thing ended with my character tossing an incendiary grenade into a nearby oxygen storage room. The hospital was leveled along with a nearby nursing home. Somehow our characters managed to escape without a scratch.

Our tour of death and destruction changed settings, as I grew bored of cyberpunk and asked Howe about moving on to something more exciting. This prompted Howe to change the storyline, tweaking it in a way to fit our demented gaming style. Our characters were kidnapped by aliens, who’d heard about our earthly exploits. They needed some Terran muscle to move in on their enemies. They wanted to capitalize on our ability to turn living beings into pounds of mutilated flesh.

The new setting was borrowed from a little-known game called Star Frontiers. Star Frontiers was TSR’s (creator and publisher of Dungeons & Dragons) failed attempt to create a serious space adventure. For us, Star Frontiers offered several new killing fields. New alien worlds became our shooting galleries, our explosive-laden playgrounds. Our intergalactic debauchery destroyed a dozen worlds, with each world destroyed in some unique, almost artistic way. One world was wiped out by a flesh-eating plague. Another obliterated by its sun. A planet consumed by supermassive colonies of nanite cells. Entire species were scratched out of existence. We stole spaceships and jettisoned crew members out of airlocks and into the hard vacuum of space. Mayhem, murder, and outright plunder became the name of the game. We were the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, coming to wreak havoc on mortal souls everywhere. We were the Devourers of Worlds, galactic meat grinders traveling between the stars.

The summer following my high school graduation put a damper on the daily game sessions at JADE. I knew was I going to start college in August. The college I was going to was some three hundred miles away, making it too far for regular gaming commutes. Something told me that the group needed to end the game with a bang—a campaign to end all gaming campaigns. I wanted a campaign that ended in a total party kill (TPK).

I told Howe about my idea. A TPK was in line with Howe’s sadistic gamemastering sensibilities. Thus, he agreed to end the campaign with a real blowout of a TPK. He began plotting out the new campaign’s general structure. This led to our characters being brought back to Earth in a stolen spaceship. It was the Welcome Home Tour. Our intergalactic shenanigans followed in tow. A coalition of vengeful aliens began an invasion of Earth, threatening to wipe out all humans. This was payback for our intergalactic killing spree.

With our weapons locked and loaded, we stole an alien capital ship that was about ten kilometers in length. This required a little finesse that was well beyond our usual method of greasing opponents or taking over enemy ships. We vented the ship’s air supply. This took longer than we had hoped. The alien invasion was successfully sterilizing entire continents of human beings and turning the Earth’s surface into molten glass. This prompted a last-minute decision to go out with a real bang. We steered the capital ship toward the Earth’s atmosphere, blowing away alien warships left and right. The ship’s systems started going critical. “Core containment breached.” We were leaking radiation like an old Russian submarine. “Critical core conditions imminent.”

Then boom. Nothing but a white searing light. A million-gigaton explosion obliterated the Earth’s atmosphere and everything on the surface.

When I started college in August, I couldn’t help but wonder how I was going to satisfy my gaming fix. I was in a new town and hundreds of miles away from the cramped JADE office, where I had spent countless hours gaming. I was surprised to find that others had the same interests. Some of my fellow students had the same needs for buffoonery and destruction.

I started a gaming group in my dorm hall by setting up shop in empty common areas. The group was a big hit. Four gamers turned out for the first gaming sessions. We were traveling across the galaxy, fighting the Wrath in our homebrew Stargate roleplaying game. We fought as guerrillas in a post-apocalyptic landscape. The bodies were stacked like cordwood. The blood ran in the streets. The dice clattered on top of tables, with silent prayers or mutterings under the breath of each player. I was transported back to that day when I came to Howe’s office in JADE. It was a euphoria I didn’t understand, nor did I care to. There was something about butchering imaginary people and destroying peaceful alien worlds

[roleplayolyhedrons]

Unified Core Mechanics

Hint: Having a bunch of core dice mechanics is counterintuitive and hard to master for all involved.

In the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, the core mechanics were something to be desired (some still cherish these earlier mechanics—see this fascinating article for more). These were the days of D&D’s non-unified core mechanics. Some classes required a d100 or percentile die to perform certain checks. The d20 was used for combat and checks, but there are more esoteric rules, tucked away in the earlier rulebooks, that required a d6 to be rolled to determine success or failure, something referred to in the above-linked article as the Rule of 2. This seems confusing to those of us who started with the third edition (and 3.5).

With each new edition of D&D, the esoteric and, if we’re honest, confusing rules were cut away, replacing them with something a bit more crunchy and uniform. It was the third edition, and the 3.5 edition, that unified the core mechanics within D&D. You rolled a d20 for almost everything. Other dice became secondary or tertiary to the almighty d20. The system became the d20 system, which was an impactful and business-savvy move by Wizards of the Coast in making the core mechanics of their cash-printing game more appealing to newer or even returning players.

While many folks despised the overemphasis on rules, procedures, and content bloat of the third edition, it was an important step in wrangling legacy roleplaying games like D&D. The unified approach made games like D&D less esoteric and easier to comprehend, especially if you were coming to the game a young teenager years ago, like myself.

Now, we have come to expect unified mechanics, even from the bigger names. Unified mechanics simplify the overall game, cut away the arcane, almost unusable rules, and make tabletop roleplaying a bit more approachable—although the designer in me wants to build a more manageable non-unified system: I look at early D&D rulebooks and decide against it.

[roleplayolyhedrons]

Making Games, Writing Papers

Note: Originally published on Medium, and, now republished here for my Tumblr followers.

It’s a truism in the game industry that a well-designed game should be playable immediately, with no instruction whatsoever. — Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World

I’ve struggled to make my college English composition course relevant to students. Moreover, I have struggled to help students grasp the importance of concepts like revision, editing, rhetorical analysis, document design, and so on. Students often ignore the finer details of these topics, handing in what they believe to be their best effort—much to my consternation. I’ve seen papers with Comic Sans and Gothic-style fonts. I’ve seen handwritten papers, instead of typed essays. I’ve seen poorly constructed arguments galore, despite considerable class time dedicated to the construction of arguments, rhetorical analyses, revision, and editing. Students just weren’t connecting the dots, and I believed that the way I was approaching the content was the problem.

I began searching the Web, looking to see what its fickle wisdom had to say on the matter. I found an interesting blog article concerning game design and composition, but I have since lost that blog article. However, its impact cannot be understated. (I wish to thank the person who wrote this article, as she helped me develop a successful and unique curriculum for my ENGL 1120 or Composition II courses.) The article in question suggested that to teach students in the twenty-first century, we had to approach the subject matter in a friendly, consistent, and engaging way. The teacher in question had suffered from several setbacks when it came to teaching basic composition concepts to her students, something I’d experienced as well. She suggested, and I expanded on myself in my classes, game design.

Game design, at a fundamental level, mirrors the composition process. Using iterative design, one of the many dominant design paradigms in game design, I was able to reach students in ways that I’d never imagined, and I have since implemented this curriculum across all my ENGL 1120 or Composition II courses.

We first began our foray into game design by talking about the implications of basic design. We discussed poor design (Edison Plugs), and we discussed great design (answers varied). We read seminal works on design and game design, including the first chapter of Psychopathology of Everyday Things (POET, now DOET). We read articles on MDA (i.e., mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics). We explored design in everyday games—Dungeons & Dragons, Catan, Carcassonne, rummy, various dice games, chess, etc.

Students were assigned to groups, to work on, you guessed it, games of their own. They had to apply the concepts of game design they had learned from the assigned readings and classroom discussions to their games. This created a situation in which students had to apply and remember the content they’d learned. They could not forget this information, or their projects would (ultimately) fail. 

Students were also expected to be able to understand the intricacies of rhetorical analyses (genre, medium, rhetorical situation, etc.) and relationships between author and audience, audience and product, and product and author (see a similar graphic below that is used in our English classes quite often). In other words, they need to understand how texts worked, how they failed, and how they were designed. Without this practical application through game design, I’ve seen students flounder with these very basic concepts. When I switched over to game design, students were able to connect the dots with relative ease. 

While the students were concentrating on developing coherent rules, researching game design concepts, and developing their games, they were practicing many of the skills we require students to know upon leaving ENGL 1120 or Composition II. In other words, they were learning concepts, honing skills, and engaging with ideas critically, all of which are prerequisites for performing in academia and beyond.

Our class put students to the test when they had to prototype their games in a public setting. They had to receive feedback from peers, and they were required to use this feedback to make a better game. In other words, students were encouraged to see the revision and editing process not as a chore but as an important aspect of any design, whether for written documents, games, or whatever is consumed by the public.

The culmination of the semester’s work was showcased at a public showcasing hosted at our college. This showcasing allowed students to present what they had learned, and what they had produced, and, more importantly, they had to convince members of the public to vote for their project. The voting added a bit of friendly competition and real-world reality to the situation. Students who designed poorly constructed games or convoluted games, were the ones who lost out. Those who designed engaging, unique, and understandable games, were the students who won out in the end.

On top of papers, game design projects can help students tackle the concepts we want them to be able to understand once they leave our composition classrooms. Moreover, game design offers a fun application of knowledge that is both challenging and relevant to students who will be going out into the real world, the world beyond academia’s four walls. Student papers that semester, and beyond, have been interesting and well-constructed. Students now understand how many of the concepts I teach are relevant, especially outside of simply writing.

[roleplayolyhedrons]

Where Do I Start?

Hint: It's not with D&D's 5th Edition.

If you’re looking to break into tabletop roleplaying games, you might be feeling like you’re trying to drink water from a firehose, or worse.

My recommendation?

Stay the f*ck away from Dungeons & Dragons, at least the three-volume set spanning over 1,000 pages. Instead, try something lighter.

Not convinced? I don’t blame ya.

Why lighter? you might be asking.

Lighter rulesets allow us to get our bearings, understand some fundamental concepts, and avoid being excluded long before we try to enter the hobby.

Still not convinced?

Think about it this way: When you were a kid, did you just jump on your bike, start peddling, and go a few dozen miles on

Think about it this way, too: You’ve probably played chess, poker, or any number of games. That’s great! You’ve probably played computer roleplaying games. That’s also great.

However, these aren’t the same as playing face-to-face, virtually, or otherwise, a game where you take on a single persona, sometimes more and sometimes other unusual things, interact with other players and their personas and deal with the conflicts and obstacles thrown at you by a referee, game master, or Dungeon Master.

In some roleplaying games, you might play as the player characters (PCs) and the referee. In any case, your imagination, and your ability to think through, play, and experiment is key. Some of these you’ve honed in other games. On the tabletop, you’ll bring them to bear.

These are different in that tabletop roleplaying games require players to go beyond simply clicking the right place, punching in the right combos, or laying down cards in a particular order. You need to think short- and long-term. Death is (mostly) permanent in many roleplaying games—no reloading saves to avoid death (although that should be a mechanic somewhere). You, as a player, need to rely on social skills, such as communication, playing nice, and collaboration with others. You’ll also need to think in terms of mechanics—how does this impact my play in-game, how can I use this to my advantage, etc.? You must manage resources, roleplay, problem-solve, and think creatively and critically to keep adventuring.

Roleplaying games can be easy, and they can be difficult to tackle. The best advice I can give, as an on-again, off-again player is this: Be prepared to fail, die, and have challenges. Also: Be active, negotiate, and make it an enjoyable experience for everyone by being there in the moment.

Where would I start now that roleplaying games have a bit more limelight?

I’d look for the freebies or the under $5/$10 (or whatever is cheaper in your local currency) games. The best places to start are the online quad: Itch.io¸ DriveThruRPG, Indie Press Revolution, and Exalted Funeral.

You also have Amazon and Lulu with some great indie games on those marketplaces, and you can never go wrong seeking out a local or regional game shop. With the COVID era behind us, some of these game shops have opted to sell online and deliver as well (keep an eye out for these shops).

Skim whatever you find, and then start playing with whoever is willing to go along for the ride—there are more out there these days than when I started, and it’s a great aspect of the hobby.

Need some suggestions? Here are a few to get you started (and, no, they aren’t D&D’s 5th edition):

Lasers & Feelings– Loads of people have hacked this game. The original rules are on it (click on the title for the direct link). Great for Star Trek-style games, space opera, and more. Easy to learn and play. Also: Easy to hack for homebrew games and long-term campaigns.

Breathless (Games) – The vast majority of the games built using the Breathless system are inexpensive, lightweight, super hackable, and friendly for beginners (click on the title for the whole catalog).

Cairn– For that classic D&D experience without the rules bloat.

Sherwood– A mixture of medieval fantasy, Robin Hood mythology, and arcane secrets unleashed.

Notorious — A fun science fiction game, with a recent expansion, that has you playing the notorious bounty hunters in a space opera universe similar to Star Wars.

Mothership – Uses a classic d100/particle die system. It’s a great intro to sci-fi OSR games that are easy to learn, play, and hack to meet any group or player's needs.

Ronin – An excellent solo roleplaying game.

Black Hack (Games) – Classic game hack of the original-ish Dungeons & Dragons, which includes sci-fi, fantasy, cyberpunk, and modern hacks of the original rules from The Black Hack (1st and 2nd editions).

P.S. All links above are not affiliate links. Happy exploring!