#yes diceless

[dragonkid11]

HEAT, by David 'Dragon Cobolt' Cobly, is a diceless action ttrpg that acts as a flexible toolbox that can be used to emulate any high action setting, whether with gunfire, magic, or both at once while in space, all without a single need of (rolling) dices!

[prokopetz]

Honestly it's weird that roleplaying as we know it evolved from historical wargaming.

Like for example DBA rules contain some suggestions for running campaigns with narrative and "propaganda" so I wouldn't say that it's something incompatible, and 0E looks way more like wargames than say PbtA games do, but storytelling games were a feature of artistic salons for way longer and they appear much closer to roleplaying than rulesets for reenacting ancient battles on tabletop.

Salon games didn't have skill checks but neither did wargames and it's strange that nobody came up with simplistic skill checks to add uncertainty and realism to the game

I think the line is a lot clearer when the role of dice and rules in tabletop roleplaying games is correctly understood.

"Uncertainty" and "realism" are, at best, secondary to what the dice are actually doing. Even most tabletop RPGs get it wrong when they try to explain themselves – they'll talk about the rules as something to fall back on to prevent schoolyard arguments (i.e., "yes I did!/no you didn't!") from derailing the story, when in fact it's the exact opposite.

If we look at freeform roleplaying as an illustrative parallel, we see that, while newly formed groups may in fact fall to bickering when a consensus can't be reached about what ought to happen next, mature and well-established groups tend instead to fall prey to excessive consensus-seeking: the impulse to always find an outcome that isn't necessarily one which everybody at the table can be happy with, but at the very least one which everybody at the table can agree is reasonable – and that's a lot more constraining than one might think.

In this sense, the role of picking up the dice isn't to build consensus, but to break it – to allow for the possibility of outcomes which nobody at the table wanted or expected. It's the "well, this is happening now" factor that prevents the table's dynamic from ossifying into endless consensus-seeking about what reasonably ought to happen next.

Looking to the history of wargames, this is precisely the innovation they bring to the table. Early historical wargames tended to be diceless affairs which decided outcomes by deferring to the judgment of a referee or other subject matter expert, but the use of randomisers increasingly came to be favoured because referees would tend to favour the most reasonable course, precluding upsets and rendering the outcomes of entire battles a foregone conclusion. This goes all the way back to the roots of tabletop wargaming – people were literally having "rules versus rulings" arguments two hundred years ago!

(This isn't the only facet of tabletop roleplaying culture which has its roots in wargaming culure, of course. For example, you can draw a direct line from the preoccupation of early tabletop RPGs with punishing the use of out-of-character knowledge to historical wargaming's gentleperson's agreement to refrain from making decisions based on information that one's side's commanders couldn't possibly have possessed when re-creating historical battles.)

To be clear, I don't necessarily disagree that salon games could have yielded something like modern tabletop RPGs. However, first they'd have had to arrive at the paired insights that a. excessive consensus-seeking is poison to building an interesting narrative; and b. randomisers can be used to force the breaking of consensus, and historical wargames had a substantial head start because they'd figured all that out a century earlier.

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played CHUUBO'S Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine ?

By Jenna Moran

Chuubo's is a diceless RPG logging the daily lives of a cast of quirky teenagers living in a dimension adjacent to our own, each uniquely touched by errant divinity. Gain experience points through sharing emotional moments between characters and progressing through collaboratively-written plot beats, and then use them to progress through "Quests" that unfold new phases of their lives… and up the intensity of their newfound powers.

Prewritten archetypes in the "Glass-Maker's Dragon" module include the titular Chuubo-- a kind but hapless boy who holds the power of the very stars in his hands -- and company, consisting of an imaginary friend born from a wish, a mad scientist bent on saving the world, a mysterious transfer student from our world, and the Sun (in the sky)… and more!

[thydungeongal]

I'm finally starting to think of the RPG idea I started thinking of a few days ago and how to actually design it.

At this point I'm not married to any system for the game. I'm simply going to be thinking of what I want an average game session to look like, what the expected gameplay experience and emergent narrative will be, and identify what I think would make for the most interesting decision points to actively engage players with making mechanical decisions in that narrative.

Even though the genre is going to be "fantasy adventure" it's not going to be a dungeon crawler. The manga Berserk is, as always, a big inspiration for me, as it is an extremely emotionally resonant story set in a dark fantasy world. I want a game that can at least somewhat emulate the action and character arcs of Berserk with actual mechanics in place to create player incentives for playing their characters as conflicted, multi-faceted people (Keys, a mechanic borrowed from Lady Blackbird and The Shadow of Yesterday, is, heh, key to this.) and to give characters rewards for living according to their internalities (while at the same time giving incentives for changing as people, which is exactly what Keys do as a mechanic).

Anyway, once I do identify what I want to be the interesting decision points for players I do need to ask myself where I want fortune to come in or if I even want fortune to play a role. Let's be fair, though, I don't quite trust myself to design a diceless RPG as my first proper RPG design project, so it's probably best to assume that the game will have fortune in some form. While I did recently have lots of thoughts about cards in RPGs, dice are ultimately easier for me. So it's safe to assume that dice will be used.

And I can first start with a very simple principle in those decision points:

When the outcome of something (a character action, some variable in the situation, a random event) is unclear, present it as a yes/no question and roll d6. On 1-3, no. On 4-6, yes.

I've actually basically made a universal resolution system, but everything has a 50% chance of either happening or not happening. It's a good enough starting point, but for each specific situation I can ask some further questions:

Should the probability be somehow affected by a character's capabilities? To what extent?

Should the probability be affected by external circumstances?

Should the probability be affected by something in the GM's prep?

Is there something players can do to manipulate the probability?

Does this situation warrant a more finely grained spread of results than yes/no?

And once I have answered these questions I can start to look at how I want the probability to look like for that situation. Eventually I can start grouping similar situations together (for an example, if I have decided that both combat and exploration and interaction should all be affected by character capabilities I can start thinking of whether they could be all arranged under a system where a character's stats are used to alter probabilities one way or another) and turning one-off mechanics into more broadly applicable ones. And once I've done that I can start thinking in reverse, at how to extrapolate more specific mechanics out of those more broadly applicable mechanics.

This is, of course, not the only way to go about this. I could also start with a mechanic and then think of a way how that mechanic could be turned into an interesting source of narrative and conflict in game. For an example, I could start with the following Key:

Key of Guilt Your character has a guilty conscience for transgressions they have committed, either real or imagined, and it informs their every action. Gain 1 XP every time the character helps someone in a situation that reminds them of their past. Gain 3 XP every time the character's past comes back to haunt them and places them in harm's way. Gain 5 XP every time the character saves someone from the fate they inflicted on someone else. Buyoff: Your character absolves themselves of their guilt and chooses to start living again.

And think of what types of situations a character with said Key would be cool to see in and what kinds of action that situation could contain. (I'm not entirely happy with the above Key, but it's a starting point.)

[xavidotron]

Recent Game Activities

We're in a bit of a hiatus, but a while back I started running The Far Roofs for folks from the remarkably-complete backer draft. It's very much a Jennagme, but the dice and letter tiles give it a very unique feel. Jenna's other games, being diceless. can lend themselves to a certain predictability or feeling of being planned, since the stuff that happens is mostly going to be the stuff that makes sense to the folks at the table in a "yes, and" sort of way. Sure, the other players can surprise you, but it's a very authorial sort of surprise. Whereas in The Far Roofs, any time you try to, you know, connect to someone, you might fail and y'all need to figure out what it means. Or you might critically succeed at giving an owl a vape without really meaning to. And with letter tiles, you can decide that the way you get where you need to go is by KAIJU and I guess that's what we're doing now. It definitely creates room for more swerves without being as chaotically zany as Dreampunk, and I like it at all. Plus the way it handles miraculous powers is much more concise and manageable in a way that works very well for me.

I also did a Wanderhome one-shot with some online folks. I definitely like Wanderhome a lot for a chill time, and doing the location/kith creation collaboratively rather than someone doing it in advance was fun even if it took up a lot of our time. We also focused on baggage from the war more than past Wanderhome games I've been involved with, which resonated well.

Since cat herding hasn't been lining up lately for The Far Roofs we've done a couple of sessions of Yazeba's Bed and Breakfast. It's a very unique setup for a game, with so many pregens to choose from, a bunch of pre-framed short chapters you can play in any order, and framing a lot of the content as stuff you have to unlock (with stickers!) I'm a huge fan and it's even more fun with the physical edition. It's nice to have something that you can hop in and play very quickly without anyone needing to prep and without anyone really needing to take a GM-like role during play, and the dynamic of "canon" characters that develop over time does have a fanfic-y Steven Universe-y sort of dynamic that's fun. And it's nifty to see different players gravitate towards different characters organically. The Possum Creek folks really put a lot of work into this game and it really paid off. I may host my own one-shot-day of this sometime when I feel together enough to organize or host stuff again.

It is quite wonderful to be in a time with such a great selection of indie ttrpgs!

[fantasyfantasygames]

Olympus

Olympus, Xerxes Press, 2002

Greek mythology took quite a while to get to roleplaying games. Oh sure, you saw it in the occasional supplement, or the gods got statted up so you could treat them like wandering monsters (which admittedly they kind of were in some stories), but there wasn't a lot of playing in Greek myth for quite a while.

Olympus tried to fill that gap and missed.

Up sides:

You can play the children of the gods. Good! Correct choice of power level.

There's a suggestion that if you can't figure out whose kid you are, you should just assume that you're the child of Zeus and go from there. Again: correct. Zeus, son of Kronos, called the Thunderer, giver of omens, horn-dog of the sky.

Hubris is a stat. Also, your stats include things like your relationship with the gods and with fate. The rest of the stats are boringly reasonable.

You don't get magic powers from your parent. Instead, you get favors from the gods who like you.

Down sides:

The very shallow diceless system involves playing mother-may-I with the GM. May I have two increases to my stat because I prepped for this situation? Yes you may, because I want you to overcome this challenge and this is a diceless game, so there's no actual chance of failure now. No sense of effort, no tradeoff of success and Hubris.

Speaking of which, Hubris doesn't, like... do anything. It's just a value on your sheet. Act hubritic, I guess.

The attributes are described in real-world words instead of numbers, and you're expected to remember which words are better than which. It's like FUDGE but without the numbers. "Incredible" is more than "Towering" but "Godly" is less than "Olympic", oh, sure, I'll remember that, 100% thumbs-up.

But also:

If you have one kind of relationship with one Olympian, you automatically pick up others. For instance, if you've earned Hera's wrath, you automatically get Zeus' sympathy. This can chain, but none of the chains that I checked are contradictory or infinite loops. Limiting, but verisimilitudinous.

You can be the child of a Titan. Weird.

Overall, it was an attempt. It could have gone much better if they just tried to FUDGE it, or if it got remade years later as a Fate variant. That way you could require a Hubris-based Aspect that the GM could throw Compels at.

Good luck finding this one; the publisher went under (the current Xerxes Games is not related), and their DriveThru account got hacked and then deleted years ago.

[autumnslance]

How did you pick Aeryn’s name? Was it in honor of a character or something else?

From what I recall, when I decided I wanted a Midlander WoL, I wanted something simple. The name "Striker" came to me and stuck, I just needed a first name to go with it. I wanted to stay away from names ending in a vowel as I tend to fall back on those often for my lady characters; I tend to a lot of soft sounds in lady names, and the letter V. Something a little more neutral in sound, I thought.

I decided on Erin as a possibility as it wasn't a sound combo I'd used in awhile, and then played around with various spellings of the name, and I think I subconsciously remembered Aeryn Sun from Farscape for the one I settled on (though much as I like that character, she didn't really inform much else of my Aeryn; maybe some anger issues, though Striker's a bit less...volatile than Sun).

I like to keep my character names fairly simple and easy to pronounce when I can manage it. That's usually my starting point. Sometimes a character name comes to me early on and quickly--Iyna Cauld was very suddenly in my mind fully formed--and sometimes it takes a bit of futzing around to find the right name to go with the character, like with Dark Autumn.

There was some wanting to break from my naming habits involved, I think. Unsure if I succeeded, as I tend to like names starting with A. My real name starts with A so maybe part of that.

Other character names not from FFXIV:

Melusina Ortha (Pathfinder bard) Alynore Forrester (WoW human Paladin) Daevra (WoW draenei mage) Lirriel F'sharri (originally for another story, then a WoW priest) Aerella F'sharri (WoW human hunter, mom of the above) Lormar F'sharri (rare male alt, WoW human rogue, uncle to Lirriel) Arkav (rare male alt, dranei monk) Vember Marlon (worgen druid) Nuari (troll monk) Soveh Dunizel (D&D cleric/bard, taken from a Tanith Lee novel) Nevah (D&D cleric) Vreska che Lidian (D&D Paladin) Clarity (D&D tiefling bard) Karina (from an Amber diceless game) Grilka (D&D half-orc paladin) Lyth Delmare (D&D Water Genasi Arcane Fighter)

There's plenty more but you get the idea and yes I play a lot of priests/clerics, paladins, and bards, and only very occasionally make male characters for RP purposes.

[noncombativednd]

The Problem with Not Rolling in D&D

Hey guys... you know what else can have zero combat and no rolls? Your imagination. Why on EARTH are you claiming D&D helped you do this? Give yourselves credit! Just please, don’t think the system is doing you any good... by not having rolls. You may think because I lean heavy on storytelling vs combat I’d be “anti-rolling”, but rolls are the only thing the system does to help you tell a story.

Rolls are what make a system shine. They make it so neither Player nor DM knows for sure what will happen. Yes, you don’t want to roll for everything, but without rolls... it’s just DM Fiat! Player says they do something, DM arbitrarily determines if it does or doesn’t work out. Without a Roll, the player is at the whim of DM’s fancy. Worse, this means the DM just... doesn’t get any way to add tension to the story... specially for themselves! Most other TTRPGs focus heavily on trying to make sure the DM is just as surprised about outcomes as players. It’s not just “Will they or will they not defeat that bad guy”, other systems focus heavily on having the players choose the whole directions of stories!

Now you may be asking, but wait.. how do you make rolls if everyone is just talking? Crazy story here, but if in 4 hours (average dnd session) you only roll two times... why call it D&D? You’re just basically in a RP chatroom.

But wait! Maybe it’s because you CAN’T find rolls in situations that aren’t dangerous combat and tense negotiations! Sorry, other TTRPGs show that you can and should roll more often for more things. Players need rolls so that they can help make actual changes to the story that the DM can’t just veto. If the only options they have that can’t be vetoed are either “Combat” or “Negotiate”, the players only have those two ways to make sure their rolls matter. 

Other games have rolls for things like “Hit the Streets” that allow you to find someone to get the stuff you need. Roll succeeds, the DM can’t just stop them from getting what they need. Other games have “Pierce the Mask” Where you roll to see the real person underneath someone you are talking about. On a hit the DM HAS to answer a few questions the player chooses from a list. This doesn’t just have to be “Other games” this can be D&D!

Find ways to offer rolls. They say “Man, I wonder why the really care about us finding that lost shipment” Offer for them to roll insight to seem if they can tell if it’s because their brother was helping ship it, or if their intention is just to steal all the gold because it’s not really their lost shipment! Are they stumped with what’s the best way to get in or out of this dungeon? Have them roll a dungeonering check to notice patterns that prove that there is a secret exit that’s much safer to use! Don’t stop giving them options to make rolls that force you, the DM, to change your plans! That man probably never HAD a brother until someone rolled to check their motive. That Dungeon may not have had an easy shortcut until they rolled to try and find one. Don’t let the game be so set in stone that you are okay with not doing rolls. Because, if you’re not doing rolls, then you’re not letting your players help tell the story.

P.S. There are diceless systems, but they just determine outcomes with things other then dice. It would work the same way, why use this diceless system if you’re not trading resources or offering deals like system has built in.

[prokopetz]

I was looking at your post about ttrpgs without randomizers and was thinking about what elements could determine success and failure because I am not experienced with any.

One I thought of is players having a pool of basically success points that they use to do cool stuff. The gm gives out more success points when bad stuff happens to the players and the cycle continues but I can’t be the first person to think of a mechanic like this.

My question is, do you know on any ttrpgs that use a mechanic like this?

(With reference to this post here).

Yes, the approach you describe is a common one in randomiser-less tabletop RPGs. Examples of the type include Avery Alder's Dream Askew (later adapted as the No Dice, No Masters/Belonging Outside Belonging system and subsequently featured in many other games), Minerva McJanda et al.'s Godsend, Ryo Kamiya's Golden Sky Stories, Jason Durall's Lords of Gossamer and Shadow (and, to a lesser extent, the game that inspired it, Erick Wujcik's Amber Diceless), Dr. Jenna Moran's Nobilis (and other games by the same author), and Colin Fredericks' Sufficiently Advanced (from 2nd Edition onward).

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played WANDERHOME

By Jay Dragon @jdragsky

Wanderhome is a pastoral fantasy role-playing game about traveling animal-folk, the world they inhabit, and the way the seasons change. It is a game filled with grassy fields, mossy shrines, herds of chubby bumblebees, opossums in sundresses, salamanders with suspenders, starry night skies, and the most beautiful sunsets you can imagine.

A diceless and GM-less game, built on the Belonging Outside Belonging engine

[kayawagner]

Gnome Stew Notables – Avery Alder

Welcome to the next installment of our Gnome Spotlight: Notables series. The notables series is a look at game developers in the gaming industry doing good work. The series will focus on female game creators and game creators of color primarily, and each entry will be a short bio and interview. We’ve currently got a group of authors and guest authors interviewing game creators and hope to bring you many more entries in the series as it continues on. If you’ve got a suggestion for someone we should be doing a notables article on, send us a note at headgnome@gnomestew.com. – Head Gnome John

Meet Avery

Avery is an experienced game designer interested in bringing meaningful and easy-to-learn games to a wider audience. Emphasizing collaboration and games where players decide ‘what is possible’, Avery’s games work to realize the potential for roleplaying games to challenge our politics, transform our lives, and bring about social change. Her works include: Monsterhearts, The Quiet Year, Ribbon Drive.

Check out Avery’s Kickstarter for Dream Askew//Dream Apart

@dreamaskew on twitter

Talking with Avery

1.) You have a new game out! Tell us about your latest game on Kickstarter. It’s called Dream Askew?

Yes! My latest project is on Kickstarter now! It is actually a split book with two games that are sort of companion games. I wrote Dream Askew, which is about a queer community amid the collapse of civilization, where the characters are influential people and explore what they would do with all the potential and scarcity that they now have. It is explicitly about a marginalized community banding together, and acknowledges that the apocalypse won’t reach everyone at the same time. I like that all of that possibility could be really hopeful… Benjamin Rosenbaum’s game Dream Apart is about being members of a Jewish shtetl in 19th century Eastern Europe. Both are designed as diceless and gm-less games that are good for seasoned players but are also beginner-friendly.

softcover, full colour, half-letter (5.5 x 8.5), approx. 100-180 pages

2.) Tell us a little bit about yourself and your work.

I have been designing games since high school and have explored a lot of different themes and approaches, but I keep coming back to themes of self-doubt, troubled communities—with conflicts like ideological differences—and relationships, queer community, and the post-apocalypse or exploring what would happen after the collapse of civilization. My games don’t focus on despair and suffering though. They focus on finding out where hope survives in that process.

I am really proud of my game Ribbon Drive, which was a freeform game that used songs from music playlists brought by the players to inspire the scenes and framing that players responded to in the game. For me, this game was about players coming in with a vision of the future—the places the game would go—and learning how to re-examine, and eventually let go of, that vision.

In 2012 I released probably my most popular game, Monsterhearts, where players are teenage monsters—both literally and metaphorically. They are teens making sense of their changing bodies and social worlds, while being monsterous creatures with their associated behavioral traits. This game had a lot of queer themes, with monstrosity standing in as a metaphor for a lot of things, but especially queerness. Sexuality and its confusing abiguities are core mechanic for the game.

I also designed The Quiet Year, which is a map drawing game about a community that has survived the collapse of civilization and is trying to rebuild. It is sort of a combination of board game, world building, and and abstract poetry exercise!

3.) Can you tell me a little bit more about how you make those thematic choices? Are these intentional and goal oriented? More personal?

I think it’s a mixture of personal interest and goal. I have lots of ideas and start working on lots of games and then abandon most of them…so the ones that have a burning need to be created are the ones that make it through. They are the games with themes I find really compelling, and that do mechanical things that push back against prevailing design trends…or build on those trends. There was a period in the indie design community when every design revolved around scene-level conflict resolution mechanics, and play pushed toward these conflicts in every scene. Ribbon Drive was designed as a game where you didn’t have conflict, and even when there were obstacles you could take a detour. You couldn’t use traits in the same scene that you introduced them. I think it’s important to have games about learning humility and self-reflection, not just conflict. One factor in choosing these elements is that they feel like a timely contribution to the community at a meta- level. Play can serve to promote belonging to a world working towards revolution and looking really critically at our own goals and actions. The games I design that make it to production really further that…it’s not coincidental.

4.) How did you get into games? Was there a memorable or meaningful gaming (or design) experience that encouraged you to get involved?

I have always been excited about games. D&D 3.5 was my first RPG experience. I was in a logging town where there weren’t a lot of opportunities, but with D&D I was able to imagine a world bigger than my small town. I was playing with a group of boys who were all smarmy know-it-alls, and would argue that the one GM-ing was wrong or could have done better. The games would always fizzle. From the get go I could see the potential in the medium and see us all having trouble accessing that potential, and with all our play styles wanting really different things. So I started designing my own games pretty quickly to try to see how to make the play experience better. I released my first game a month after I graduated high school.

5.) Who did you look up to when you got started in the industry? Or who do you look up to now?

Paul Czege wrote My Life With Master, the first indie role playing game I ever ordered, and it was the game that introduced me to tight minimal design. In that game, you play as a minion to an intimidating master—a figure like Dracula or Frankenstein. There was the tension of wanting to do something for your master while also knowing you can’t escape them, but slowly developing curiosity about the townsfolk and the bravery and competence to overthrow the master. Your character was represented by only a few stats: Self-Loathing, Weariness, and Love for the townsfolk was all the definition that you needed. Czege’s focused, minimal, tight, thematic mechanics really informed the kind of designer I became.

6.) Are there any important changes you see (or would like to see) occurring in the industry?

I have seen more games by and about women, which is really exciting. I see women designers getting a spotlight more often and also more queer themes being included in stories—both by queer designers and by designers working to exclude fewer people from their stories. I also see a push for diversity generally, and more conventions thinking about diversity of guests they bring out…But I see most of that push for diversity in ways that focus on gender and sexuality and not on race. I’ve seen panels on bringing diversity to the games industry that are all white, so I’d want more designers of color to be given guest spots at conventions and to get their work spotlighted more often. And maybe more attention on decolonization led by indigenous people in the community. From a design perspective, the thing I’d really want to see are games accessible to new players and that play in a few hours (ex. Jason Morningstar’s games point a way forward). I work to design games that are mechanically simple, but they still typically require a lot of high concept thinking and take 3-4 hours. There aren’t many games that play in just one or two hours.

7.) I’m glad you mentioned the time commitment that many RPGs take. Are there other ways these games could be more beginner-friendly?

In terms of a way that a book presents its concepts, not using acronyms is huge! Acronyms make it really imposing. In terms of design, games that require less math and that explain the concepts in the same place that you find them on the character sheet make them more accessible, so new players aren’t just looking down and seeing all these numbers. For play, thinking about making spaces accessible to new parents since many people have young children. In terms of themes, I think that as designers and storytellers we need to be really mindful about what themes will make sense to a general audience, and which are recursive tropes and memes that gamers have developed that are inscrutable to the outside world…like the progression of rat killing in sewers to becoming a demi-god doesn’t make sense to people who don’t already know it. If you are going to tell those stories and want them to be welcoming to new players, you really have to spell it out for new players…and what else might they know that looks similar. We like to think that these stories are like Lord of the Rings, but they really aren’t. The model for a D&D character arc is outside the usual.

I think a thing that comes up with my work is that people who are long time gamers have more trouble connecting thematically with what I’m writing than people who haven’t played RPGs before. For example, with Ribbon Drive, if you are coming in from D&D and Pathfinder as a point of reference to this game you are going to stumble more because really obvious cultural touchstones for some aren’t necessarily gamer touchstones, so people stumble over them.

8.) I am very excited for your new project. Can you tell me a little more about it before I let you go?

One of the really cool things about this Kickstarter project is the way Dream Askew & Dream Apart are in dialogue. They both are about marginalized communities that have created this place of belonging and possibility, while at the fringes of society. They build off the same themes but take them to really different places; in one case taking those themes in the context of a group that really existed, while the other is about a more fantastic range of possibilities. One asks you to build upon and explore your relationship to history, and the other asks you to imagine and build a world together. I’m interested in ways these games are both very similar and very divergent, and compliment each other and tease out the themes and possibilities of each. With Benjamin, thinking that if this project is about them both being a type of game, we’ve included a chapter on designing this type of game—encouraging people to continue exploring community, development, and juggling tensions and choices though game design. The book is not just a manual for how to play a game but is a manual for how to play a particular kind of game, as well as a piece that encourages you to design and explore further on your own.

I think it is really important to say that, in addition to Dream Askew & Dream Apart being rich games with powerful themes, I think they are really fun. Fun games that are for anyone. The first time I played Dream Apart we were high-fiving and laughing…it was just so fun to play!

Thanks for joining us for this entry in the notables series.  You can find more in the series here: and please feel free to drop us any suggestions for people we should interview at headgnome@gnomestew.com.

Gnome Stew Notables – Avery Alder published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com

[swipestream]

Gnome Stew Notables – Avery Alder

Welcome to the next installment of our Gnome Spotlight: Notables series. The notables series is a look at game developers in the gaming industry doing good work. The series will focus on female game creators and game creators of color primarily, and each entry will be a short bio and interview. We’ve currently got a group of authors and guest authors interviewing game creators and hope to bring you many more entries in the series as it continues on. If you’ve got a suggestion for someone we should be doing a notables article on, send us a note at headgnome@gnomestew.com. – Head Gnome John

Meet Avery

Avery is an experienced game designer interested in bringing meaningful and easy-to-learn games to a wider audience. Emphasizing collaboration and games where players decide ‘what is possible’, Avery’s games work to realize the potential for roleplaying games to challenge our politics, transform our lives, and bring about social change. Her works include: Monsterhearts, The Quiet Year, Ribbon Drive.

Check out Avery’s Kickstarter for Dream Askew//Dream Apart

@dreamaskew on twitter

Talking with Avery

1.) You have a new game out! Tell us about your latest game on Kickstarter. It’s called Dream Askew?

Yes! My latest project is on Kickstarter now! It is actually a split book with two games that are sort of companion games. I wrote Dream Askew, which is about a queer community amid the collapse of civilization, where the characters are influential people and explore what they would do with all the potential and scarcity that they now have. It is explicitly about a marginalized community banding together, and acknowledges that the apocalypse won’t reach everyone at the same time. I like that all of that possibility could be really hopeful… Benjamin Rosenbaum’s game Dream Apart is about being members of a Jewish shtetl in 19th century Eastern Europe. Both are designed as diceless and gm-less games that are good for seasoned players but are also beginner-friendly.

softcover, full colour, half-letter (5.5 x 8.5), approx. 100-180 pages

2.) Tell us a little bit about yourself and your work.

I have been designing games since high school and have explored a lot of different themes and approaches, but I keep coming back to themes of self-doubt, troubled communities—with conflicts like ideological differences—and relationships, queer community, and the post-apocalypse or exploring what would happen after the collapse of civilization. My games don’t focus on despair and suffering though. They focus on finding out where hope survives in that process.

I am really proud of my game Ribbon Drive, which was a freeform game that used songs from music playlists brought by the players to inspire the scenes and framing that players responded to in the game. For me, this game was about players coming in with a vision of the future—the places the game would go—and learning how to re-examine, and eventually let go of, that vision.

In 2012 I released probably my most popular game, Monsterhearts, where players are teenage monsters—both literally and metaphorically. They are teens making sense of their changing bodies and social worlds, while being monsterous creatures with their associated behavioral traits. This game had a lot of queer themes, with monstrosity standing in as a metaphor for a lot of things, but especially queerness. Sexuality and its confusing abiguities are core mechanic for the game.

I also designed The Quiet Year, which is a map drawing game about a community that has survived the collapse of civilization and is trying to rebuild. It is sort of a combination of board game, world building, and and abstract poetry exercise!

3.) Can you tell me a little bit more about how you make those thematic choices? Are these intentional and goal oriented? More personal?

I think it’s a mixture of personal interest and goal. I have lots of ideas and start working on lots of games and then abandon most of them…so the ones that have a burning need to be created are the ones that make it through. They are the games with themes I find really compelling, and that do mechanical things that push back against prevailing design trends…or build on those trends. There was a period in the indie design community when every design revolved around scene-level conflict resolution mechanics, and play pushed toward these conflicts in every scene. Ribbon Drive was designed as a game where you didn’t have conflict, and even when there were obstacles you could take a detour. You couldn’t use traits in the same scene that you introduced them. I think it’s important to have games about learning humility and self-reflection, not just conflict. One factor in choosing these elements is that they feel like a timely contribution to the community at a meta- level. Play can serve to promote belonging to a world working towards revolution and looking really critically at our own goals and actions. The games I design that make it to production really further that…it’s not coincidental.

4.) How did you get into games? Was there a memorable or meaningful gaming (or design) experience that encouraged you to get involved?

I have always been excited about games. D&D 3.5 was my first RPG experience. I was in a logging town where there weren’t a lot of opportunities, but with D&D I was able to imagine a world bigger than my small town. I was playing with a group of boys who were all smarmy know-it-alls, and would argue that the one GM-ing was wrong or could have done better. The games would always fizzle. From the get go I could see the potential in the medium and see us all having trouble accessing that potential, and with all our play styles wanting really different things. So I started designing my own games pretty quickly to try to see how to make the play experience better. I released my first game a month after I graduated high school.

5.) Who did you look up to when you got started in the industry? Or who do you look up to now?

Paul Czege wrote My Life With Master, the first indie role playing game I ever ordered, and it was the game that introduced me to tight minimal design. In that game, you play as a minion to an intimidating master—a figure like Dracula or Frankenstein. There was the tension of wanting to do something for your master while also knowing you can’t escape them, but slowly developing curiosity about the townsfolk and the bravery and competence to overthrow the master. Your character was represented by only a few stats: Self-Loathing, Weariness, and Love for the townsfolk was all the definition that you needed. Czege’s focused, minimal, tight, thematic mechanics really informed the kind of designer I became.

6.) Are there any important changes you see (or would like to see) occurring in the industry?

I have seen more games by and about women, which is really exciting. I see women designers getting a spotlight more often and also more queer themes being included in stories—both by queer designers and by designers working to exclude fewer people from their stories. I also see a push for diversity generally, and more conventions thinking about diversity of guests they bring out…But I see most of that push for diversity in ways that focus on gender and sexuality and not on race. I’ve seen panels on bringing diversity to the games industry that are all white, so I’d want more designers of color to be given guest spots at conventions and to get their work spotlighted more often. And maybe more attention on decolonization led by indigenous people in the community. From a design perspective, the thing I’d really want to see are games accessible to new players and that play in a few hours (ex. Jason Morningstar’s games point a way forward). I work to design games that are mechanically simple, but they still typically require a lot of high concept thinking and take 3-4 hours. There aren’t many games that play in just one or two hours.

7.) I’m glad you mentioned the time commitment that many RPGs take. Are there other ways these games could be more beginner-friendly?

In terms of a way that a book presents its concepts, not using acronyms is huge! Acronyms make it really imposing. In terms of design, games that require less math and that explain the concepts in the same place that you find them on the character sheet make them more accessible, so new players aren’t just looking down and seeing all these numbers. For play, thinking about making spaces accessible to new parents since many people have young children. In terms of themes, I think that as designers and storytellers we need to be really mindful about what themes will make sense to a general audience, and which are recursive tropes and memes that gamers have developed that are inscrutable to the outside world…like the progression of rat killing in sewers to becoming a demi-god doesn’t make sense to people who don’t already know it. If you are going to tell those stories and want them to be welcoming to new players, you really have to spell it out for new players…and what else might they know that looks similar. We like to think that these stories are like Lord of the Rings, but they really aren’t. The model for a D&D character arc is outside the usual.

I think a thing that comes up with my work is that people who are long time gamers have more trouble connecting thematically with what I’m writing than people who haven’t played RPGs before. For example, with Ribbon Drive, if you are coming in from D&D and Pathfinder as a point of reference to this game you are going to stumble more because really obvious cultural touchstones for some aren’t necessarily gamer touchstones, so people stumble over them.

8.) I am very excited for your new project. Can you tell me a little more about it before I let you go?

One of the really cool things about this Kickstarter project is the way Dream Askew & Dream Apart are in dialogue. They both are about marginalized communities that have created this place of belonging and possibility, while at the fringes of society. They build off the same themes but take them to really different places; in one case taking those themes in the context of a group that really existed, while the other is about a more fantastic range of possibilities. One asks you to build upon and explore your relationship to history, and the other asks you to imagine and build a world together. I’m interested in ways these games are both very similar and very divergent, and compliment each other and tease out the themes and possibilities of each. With Benjamin, thinking that if this project is about them both being a type of game, we’ve included a chapter on designing this type of game—encouraging people to continue exploring community, development, and juggling tensions and choices though game design. The book is not just a manual for how to play a game but is a manual for how to play a particular kind of game, as well as a piece that encourages you to design and explore further on your own.

I think it is really important to say that, in addition to Dream Askew & Dream Apart being rich games with powerful themes, I think they are really fun. Fun games that are for anyone. The first time I played Dream Apart we were high-fiving and laughing…it was just so fun to play!

Thanks for joining us for this entry in the notables series.  You can find more in the series here: and please feel free to drop us any suggestions for people we should interview at headgnome@gnomestew.com.

Gnome Stew Notables – Avery Alder published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[untoldpaths]

Welcome Aboard!

Untold Paths is a text-based online RPG site with over 15yrs of history. We used to be called Vaxia - but we’ve got more settings now and want to get started off right. We're new to Tumblr, so give us a minute to get settled in.

We'll be making announcements for sessions here on Tumblr so new players can come check us out!

A bit of QnA:

"What's a session?" Short version: A game session! Longer: Playing online means gasp scheduling! So we try to plan ahead.

"Game? Isn't online RP all diceless?" Naw, babe. We got dice. Well - virtual rand() dice and an in-site dice roller!

"Wait, wait. Dice? What about character sheets?" Those too. ;)

"What system?" 15 yrs ago we didn't have many options so we rolled our  own. You'll find seven stats and LOTS of flexible skills.

"Define flexible." Do you like FATE? No, really. It’s that flexible! You can be an Arch-mage of Baked Goods if you want.

"How complicated is it?" Our site takes the math off your hands. We want you to come in and play and not have to worry about dice.

"But I like casual!" So do we! Our XP system is by-the-post - so you can just hang out in character and keep gaining XP.

"What about running a game?" We are a shared persistent world! All of our hosts run in the same setting(s), we'll help you learn and get you running too.

"Settings? Plural?" Yes! We like peanut butter and jelly. Vaxia is our fantasy setting, Sirian our hard(er) SF setting. We like options and figure you do too.

And sadly that's enough of our QnA at the moment - we've gotta go clean up the place a bit for guests. Hope to see you soon!

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played AMBER Diceless Roleplaying Game ?

By Erick Wujick

Play the powerful, reality-shifting, squabbling royals of Zelazny's Amber novels as you backstab, trick, and outmaneuver your compatriots. Character generation starts with the auction, where players bid to establish a set ranking for the four attributes; all else being equal, the higher ranking player will win a contest of that attribute, so players must scheme to create advantages or force a contest on their preferred turf. Unspent/overspent points in the auction become good/bad "stuff" as an extra flavour mechanic

The game was republished without the Amber IP as Lords of Gossamer and Shadow in a 2013 crowdfund

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played MOUNTAIN HIKE ?

By Jake C-B (RollForThings on itch)

Mountain Hike is a one-page, rules-light game about hiking. Suitable for solo or group, GMed or GMless play, hikers overcome obstacles and appreciate nature as they trek toward a mountain peak. The game folds up into a little pocket-sized zine and can even be played diceless to turn a regular neighborhood walk into a hiking adventure.

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

Have you played FEATHERED ADVENTURES ?

By Come Martin

FEATHERED ADVENTURES is a diceless RPG of anthropomorphic birds going on pulp adventures, trying to overcome their flaws to come out on top.

(Poll Runner Note : Please I love this game. The layout is just *chef kiss*. Even my players used to more trad ttrpg loved it and wanted more.)