In one of my campaigns, we were taking a 2 month break (during which I was running City of Mist) and I said that it would be a canonical 2-month hiatus for the characters as well. I told the players—ALL SEVEN OF THEM—that anyone who wrote me a description of what their characters were up to in those two months would level up for free. It didn't have to be a lot; 4-6 dot points or a page of prose, whatever they preferred.

Folks, only 2 out of the 7 took the offer. We were unbalanced for the next 5 months.

tipsy girl at the club is a kind of paladin

1. Immune to fear

2. Can give people stronger saves through a charisma based aura

3. Can detect evil

4. Can cast spells?

5. Can definitely smite.

The logic is sound.

Monster who eats your backstory.

It bites you and you've now sprang into being just now ex nihilo

This is going to be retroactively canon next time a player comes to me with a backstory-less character...

In d&d, goblinoids are in this weird place.

They're crafty and cunning, but most lack intelligence (representatively, at least). They're in tune with nature in a weird way, and they're technically fey, but they're almost never portrayed as fey. They're capable of industry and wickedly clever designs but are not masters of craft or artisans.

They are the creatures originally intended for cannon fodder that players of ttrpgs kinda fell in love with. They represented a lot of bad tropes, and so we tried to change them but we were not fully capable of washing away the complicated history on them.

When I run goblins as a society. They aren't lesser. They aren't stupid. They aren't bad. They just haven't been given opportunity as a culture. They're outcast as a race of beings, never welcomed in to communities where they'd learn things and have resources due to how different they are. They also tend to be what happens when you get a very diverse heritage (in a sort of roundabout description way). Elves and orcs and dwarves and gnomes and everything. You get fey pointed ears, you get darker green and brown skin tones, you get this thin figure that's surprisingly durable and hardy, they're short, they're nimble, they're good with they're hands, they can work iron. The list goes on. Heck. Sometimes I give them horns.

I also like to rule that they do the best with what they're given. They can't get access to raw materials, so they scavenge what they can. They get metal from slag dumps and pan out the useful bits. Thier cloth is a mixture of scrap hide and recycled trash. Goblin alchemy is slightly more refined because they can gather most of what they need from nature, but glassware is almost always unavailable and so they are limited in what they can make.

And this whole thing makes goblins frustrated. Why are they the ones left out? Are they just monsters to the rest of the world? They have aspects of every other type of humanoid to them, but they just don't have enough of any one thing to be welcome among the other cultures. But when given the chance to shine, goblins can really show that they're diamonds in the rough. And not really all that rough to begin with. Not rough at all. Just a diamond cut another way.

Additional card to put in the deck of many things you have 20 seconds go

Samsara card

You are immediately affected by a Reincarnation, rolling randomly on a table of over 100 creatures.

Do you come back as a playable race? Do you come back as a Dragon, or a Solar, or a Pit Fiend?

Do you come back as a Gelatinous Cube?

One of the results is just "Chair".

I don’t think I have the chops for D&D or other tabletop RPGs but I could make a good DM’s assistant. I don’t play the game but I sit and listen and then after the session the DM can ask me for ideas.

and I am in character as the king’s most trusted advisor the whole time

I could say things like “yes, my liege, most clever, my liege” and keep notes for the DM and maybe supply a few character voices. and serve everyone very sinister tea.

No. I’m not looking for any words. Dungeon Mentat suits me just fine.

I believe he rolled a 3,my lord... He does this to spite you...

I know OP is deactivated but if you think DnD is 'too tough' PLEASE look into indie systems. DnD is the worst possible entry into TTRPGs because it's by far one of the most complex systems in existence.

If you look on itchio, you can literally see a ton of systems whose all rules fit on one page of paper. A big chunk of them only use coins or six-sided dice for rolls.

It’s not about complexity, I promise. It’s about stage fright.

Performing Shakespeare or public speaking in front of strangers? Fine.

Trying to do improv and be funny in front of my friends? I’d rather die.

I wish more people used Magic the Gathering's Color Pie instead of D&D's alignment all of the time.

Like, saying a character embodies the selfishness and impulsivenes of Red Black offers more depth than Chaotic Evil

It’s substantially deeper.

Good enough for me

I hate Good vs Evil as a Character alignment choice. Hate hate HATE hate. I’m sorry, but Good and Evil can be measured along many axes, and fucking nobody wakes up in the morning and goes “golly I sure do love being Evil! Gonna go make the world worse on purpose because I’m just so awful!”

Get the fuck outta here with that Protestant-ass characterization. I got something better for you:

[Watsonian; the colors of magic are drawn from different landforms, such as islands or mountains, and are characteristics of a type of magical currency called Mana which serves as the mechanical resource used to cast spells.]

[Doylist: each color has its own philosophies and opinions and perspectives about the world that influence Design beyond simple aesthetics]

Hence:

Each Color has its own axioms about Good/Evil!

White: Without Rules, without Order, without Law, there is only Chaos, and Good cannot exist amongst Chaos. We must all do our part.

Blue: Ignorance inevitably results in Evil; Good can only be accomplished with Knowledge. Even distasteful or horrifying Knowledge has Utility.

Black: People will label anything that they Like as “Good” and whatever they dislike as “Evil.” Whoever has the most Power gets to dictate what that means in practice.

Red: Ya wanna know what’s Evil? A single man ordering around thousands of others! “Evil Empire” is redundant, all Empires are “Evil.”

Green: The nature of Evil is to Take more than is Needed, to Exploit, and to Exclude. If one wishes to be Good, one should endeavor to be Respectful, Generous, and Harmonious.

—-

As you can see, this gives us substantially more dimensionality for characterization.

Your standard high fantasy village is in grave peril. The village elders confer, and a champion is chosen to go forth to save the village.

Red: A despotic Tyrant has been building an Empire, conquering kingdom after kingdom and bringing them to their knees. Even if you surrender, your culture and way of life will be destroyed.

Green: This village has long been a haven for Outcasts, Misfits, Freaks, and Weirdos. It’s tucked away, not very rich, but rich in Love and Family and very nice hand crafts. Unfortunately, it sits on top of a large copper vein that the Imperial Treasury wants to exploit, and you all are very much in the way.

White: Your village has long suffered raids from bandits, barbarians, and outlaws, and the strain of recovering each time is becoming too great; something must be done.

Blue: The land suffers under the iron-fisted rule of a despotic tyrant. Your village has discovered the secret to his awful power and how to destroy him. Unfortunately, he knows that you know.

Black: Truth be told, your village isn’t actually “in peril” (at least, not any more than usual). Nobody sent you. You were not chosen. But there is Evil afoot, and you are offended by this Evil, and you will see to it personally that it ends.

I'm at work atm but yes all of this. You understand the complexity beyond just Good Vs Evil and how the colors are both a simple and complex character building tool. And you haven't even gone over the beauty behind wedges/shards (yet?)

Chaotic good? You would do good above all else? How? Because using the color pie you've got White Red, a passionate fight for justice, almost zealot like.

White Blue, perhaps justice at the cost of some personal freedoms? A calm controlling fight because they know best

Or White Black, justice for you and yours. A fight where the ends justify the means and history is written by the winners.

I could classify all of those as Chaotic Good, but they're all technically different.

cracks knuckles

Blue: A digital archivist sits at a bank of monitors, collecting, preserving, and distributing banned books, explicit art, and radical music.

Black: “Why? Because fuck ‘em, that’s why. Who says they’re the Good Guys? Them? You gotta open your eyes, man.”

Red: “I just feel like, if you wanna live in a Free Society, you gotta occasionally inconvenience those who are accustomed to getting whatever they want.”

Green: The Secret Police would kill him on the spot if they knew how many Scapegoats he had smuggled to safety. He had no great love for these people, but as far as he was concerned they were innocent and did not deserve to die.

White: [Actual Public Face of The Resistance. Wrote The Manifesto. Spends most of The Revolution de facto imprisoned.]

I don't really get this yet (especially the difference between Red and Black tbh) but I'm going to read more about it because it is cool

You see, the colors are partially defined by their relationship to each other; they don’t fully make sense without discussing all 5. So.

Red is also an ally of Green, whereas Black is allied with Blue. They both hate White.

What does this mean?

You probably noticed that both Red and Black are Selfish; their motivations are intrinsic, and they do not believe that they owe the world anything. This is what we mean when we say they are both “enemies of White”, as White in this context is the color of self-sacrifice, of giving yourself away.

But they disagree on other points.

Red and Blue are enemies. Blue is ultimately concerned with Control; of the self, of others, of the laws of reality itself. It pursues knowledge, and treasures it, but generally does not believe that it should be free to all. Blue gatekeeps.

Red hates all of that.

Black? Black is fine with it. Considers it useful, even. Black and Blue are allies. They get along fine. See, Black is much more likely to have minions than companions; more likely to desire sycophants than advisors. Additionally, Black and Blue both understand Politics.

Vise versa; Black and Green are enemies. Can’t stand each other. Green thinks Black is an ego-driven narcissist and will absolutely call them out on it. Green doesn’t take any one person very seriously. Green is a big fan of councils and democracy; Green likes community gardens and libraries. And when Black tries to pull a power grab, tries to assert dominance, do you know who will be standing right next to Green saying “not on my watch?” Red.

Red and Green get along fine. They both appreciate the world for what it is. They’re not trying to conquer or subjugate it. Red says “Strength is Freedom” and Green says “Strength is Responsibility” but they both agree that things like political machinations and inherited titles are a subversion of The Way Things Should Be.

So.

Yes, Black and Red are both Selfish, they do not consider The Community to be their personal responsibility. But. They have very different opinions on the subject of Authority.

I've been playing MTG (Magic the Gathering) since 2010/2011. And let me tell you, @asteroidtroglodyte has put the color wheel of MTG Into alignments PERFECTLY. While I could add to it, I am under no illusion that I could do any better or even as well as they have. Even if you know nothing of MTG, you should read this in its entirety because it is so painfully accurate that it feels good.

And if there is ever more additions? I shall be here waiting because this is pure gold.

(Ah yea, validation, that’s the good stuff)

Cracks knuckles

White: The Organizer, the Team Leader, the Mastermind. They’re not even in it for The Money; they’re gonna give most of it away, donate it to charity or something. Their principle contribution is the team itself: knowing the right people, being able to convince them to join this mad scheme, coordinating them through The Big Plan. Nobody else is capable of wrangling a Crew like this.

Blue: The Technical Wizard, Master of Gadgets, Hacker of Computers. The actual technology involved is irrelevant; this is the person who understands the arcane secrets: they have Keys to The Backdoors; they know exactly how long the Important Door is vulnerable; they know the things the Casino doesn’t want them to know. They will spend the money gaining more control in their life: more anonymity, debts settled, perhaps a new identity.

Black: The Face, The Impersonator, The Confidence Artist. Gets recruited to The Crew when the White interrupts them in the middle of a Confidence Scheme. Consummate liars, actors, impersonators; they can be whatever, or more precisely whoever, is required by The Heist. In it for the money. You can always trust them… to act in their own self interest. Sex appeal part of the toolkit almost by default.

Red: The Escape Artist, Driver of Getaway Vehicles, Captain of The Exit Strategy. Unfazed by Chaos, unruffled by changes to The Plan. Generally heavily ADHD coded, with a pinch of Adrenaline Junky sprinkled on top. Master of vehicles, evader of Law Enforcement, the one responsible for ensuring everyone’s freedom at the end of The Plan.

Green: The Muscle. Martial Artist, Mercenary, or Military Veteran? A good question that will never be adequately answered. The Casino is very likely to resist being robbed, and Green is here to Apply Force. The precise nature of that force will depend on genre and rating, but if there’s gonna be a showdown with law enforcement or security, that scene will be Green’s moment of glory.

I'm trying to understand green, and differentiate it from white. So green and white are both colors of peace and community, but their relationship to blue is different.

Blue is the color of progress, of never being satisfied, of an unending crusade of betterment.

White, as an ally of blue, takes a similar mindset, of "I want to change the world for the better." White wants to unite the world under its own banner of peace and law.

Green, meanwhile, opposes blue's obsession with progress. It's the color of tradition and preservation. Green is less concerned with changing the world. Instead it believes in protecting it from any force of control. It's also more concerned with local concerns than the entire world.

Did I get that right?

Green and White resemble each other (from a distance, if you squint) for a lot of the same reasons Red and Black resemble each other: in the simplified “Good Vs Evil” systems (like D&D), Black/Red is “Evil” and Green/White is “Good.” Green and White agree on things like “serving the community” and “the greater good.” They both believe in self-sacrifice, which is why they both hate self-serving, egocentric Black.

Where they differ, much like Red and Black, is in their relationship to Authority.

As you observed, White’s amicable relationship with Blue is indicative of White’s desire to enforce an agenda; they want to change the world. White’s agenda is nominally one of Peace and Harmony, but, unlike Green, White isn’t actually willing to take “No” for an answer.

White believes in Authority by Rule of Law; White loves Rules; White is an Empire Builder.

Green? Not so much.

You see, things like Empire have certain requirements: for example, having an administrative ruling class necessitates a subservient labor class. Having “Rule of Law” necessitates things like “state monopoly on force” and “law enforcement.” And Green? Green spends waaay too much time hanging out with his buddy “all cops are bastards” Red to really have enthusiasm for “Crime & Punishment.”

Green is very Grounded.

In a room full of White soldiers, a man in a fancy hat makes a speech about sacrificing your life to secure the nation’s future. There is cheering.

In a room full of Green warriors, the exact same speech is met with “If I die in some field far from here, who exactly will protect my family? You?”

Not to imply that White doesn’t care about their family as much as Green does! They do! But “family” means something different to each of them.

White values the Family Name. White wants to have a bazillion babies and encourages them all to be doctors and lawyers and judges. White is a disciplinarian who believes in tough love. A good plan to make a White-aligned parent proud is to go forth and accomplish things.

Green values the Family Members. Green encourages their children to just be themselves, even if that’s not exactly in line with what society expects. Green prefers the carrot to the stick. One of the best ways to make a Green-aligned parent proud is to simply be there for your family.

The grim side of Green is that Nature is both brutal and savage, and Green doesn’t actually see a problem with that. Predation and Plague both have valuable roles to play in Nature, and Green respects that. Green is also skeptical of things like “private property” and has very little ethical issue with simply taking things (when in need).

So, yea. You hit the nail on the head there.

Every color has 2 allies and 2 enemies. Blue is allies of White and Black, and enemies of Green and Red.

What does this mean?

Blue and White share a big picture perspective. They care about abstract ideas: ideas like Justice and Fairness, concepts like Civilization and Progress. White and Blue can wax philosophic together through many days and nights, eagerly debating the finer points of Law and Order over endless cups of coffee.

At a different table, on a different night, Black and Blue discuss different sorts of ideas. Ideas like Politics and Tactics, or the gap between Power on paper and Power in practice. They sip expensive whiskey in a private corner and discuss Secrets and Gossip; make plans together to secure their interests.

Blue bridges the gap between Black and White. Black wants the power to help themselves, and White wants the power to help others; what Blue wants is the power to acquire more power.

But there are 2 major obstacles: Red and Green. You can’t control these guys; they don’t take orders.

Green’s utter lack of ambition makes them impossible to tempt or bribe. They’re endlessly sentimental and highly skeptical of anything new. Believing that life is already perfect, they cannot be sold on the idea of Progress.

Red will disobey an order just because it’s an order; even against their own self-interest; just to prove a point. Red is deeply emotionally motivated, and being ordered around feels bad. Plus, Red is incapable of taking anyone seriously, which rubs Prideful Blue very much the wrong way.

When left to its own devices, Blue will do Research. Ultimately, what they want is to understand. They wish to know how the universe works so that they can manifest their will and ideas into it. Blues are thinkers.

There is a lot more on this on the magic the gathering developer’s blog thing

I want to add:

Colorless - Mostly mindless artifacts, robots, etc. that can be used by anyone and don’t have an agenda. But also eldritch aliens who’s agenda is too incomprehensible to fit the color system.

Multi-colored - Some individuals, groups, etc. are best regarded as a mix of two or more colors. This can make for some interesting combinations that may not feel like they perfectly fit the 5-color system.

Approved. Good explainer, @asteroidtroglodyte !

the heroes arrive at their final leg of the journey before facing the demon king and must confront a vision before entering his castle. our protagonist goes first, opening his eyes after passing through the door to find he's back home, and in the other room, his mother is alive again. he spends some time catching up with her, lingers on the idea of staying, and then finally finds the strength to say the things he'd always wished he'd gotten the chance to. he bids her a tearful, final goodbye and exits the dream

inside the castle, the other party members are leaving their dreams. they don't seem as strongly impacted by their experiences, and from their casual conversations, it rapidly becomes clear that the subject of his vision wasn't unique and they ALL went to pay the protagonist's mother a visit

the following walk to the throne room is cheerful with the whole party enjoying themselves and talking about their experiences in the erotic vision while aforementioned protagonist, a paladin, is uncharacteristically dead silent and not participating in the merriment

@txttletale's recent post about media criticism is really good and it actually spoke to me about something I've been thinking about with regards to D&D.

So okay D&D's whole gameplay doesn't actually frame the player characters in the best possible light. That's okay in my opinion, cause I don't think media needs to be morally correct for me to engage with it. When playing D&D I'll just accept some of the premise and then go with it.

But in recent years I've been seeing a lot of takes about trying to reframe D&D's gameplay through a positive lens. "The average D&D party is a found family trying their best to survive outside the status quo, trying their best to help people, etc." and it kind of rings hollow when what the gameplay still revolves around is grave-robbing, killing acceptable classes of people (under this framing "monsters" get replaced with cultists, bandits, and other folks society has deemed acceptable to kill), and often in the service of the status quo.

Like the framing of a lot of D&D adventures is "the poor village inhabited by good normal people surrounded by evil wilderness is under attack and because the power of authority doesn't extend this far into the wilderness they need your help to save them from the bad people," which is like basically forming a posse of vigilantes to enact frontier justice.

So when people try to put a positive spin on that with like "no we're just real scrappy strangers trying to do a good thing to save the world when society rejects us" it makes me go really?

Once you reject the buy-in D&D sort of requires (you gotta kill monsters and take their stuff) it kinda starts to beg the question of which stuff remains okay about the original premise. Why are bandits okay to kill? Bandits and criminals don't just emerge out of the void. People don't just wake up one day and go "I will become a bad person" and decide to go raiding and pillaging.

Why are cultists an acceptable class of people to kill? Oftentimes their motives only make sense in the cartoon morality world that is part of the buy-in of D&D. "Oh it's okay to kill them because they're always doing bad religious stuff like trying to open the gates of the hell dimension" is literally just an in-setting explanation that does not examine why they were made like that in-setting. Why were "people of certain religions" made an acceptable class to kill? (The answer doesn't lie in D&D to be honest but in its predecessors like swords & sorcery fic, but it's good to ask why that thing became a part of S&S fic and why D&D borrowed it from there in the first place.)

None of this is to say that you shouldn't do your best to make your own game palatable to your own sensibilities. But you shouldn't try to reframe the text itself as something it is not.

Usually, the answer is 'because they are killing other people and trying to kill you.'

Yep, but that answer ignores the "where did the bandits come from in the first place? What resulted in these people taking to banditry as a way of life?" Which when examined could lead to an understanding that maybe just killing the bandits because the status quo demands it may not be the best thing to do.

Not to infringe on any trademarks, but they are in the adventure zone, though. We can come up with layers upon layers of rationalizations and world building, but the truth of the matter is, they are in the adventure zone, where everything is fair game, the weapons are free, and the only thing staying the hands of the players are the players' own wits and goals.

A D&D game is divided into at minimum two places. The first place is The Place Where You Can't Start Shit, which is a bit of a misnomer, because you can start shit there, you'd just be an asshole. The second place is The Place Where You Can Feel Free To Start Shit, because that is the adventure zone and when you're in the adventure zone you are On An Adventure.

The Place Where You Can't Start Shit includes power centers such as towns, places of worship, mage's towers, and anywhere else where the players are expected to mind their manners. Usually they are clearly outmatched or the consequences are evident, like losing a place to turn filthy lucre into nice liquidity. Players can start shit there if they want, but the Conses will subsequently Quence. Most of the creatures in The Place Where You Can't are not full game pieces; they very often have only a name and a position and no other game stats. They're basically defenseless and you might as well kick a dog. Shit may yet come to them there, but that is generally understood to be the prerogative of the DM and therefore the players and their characters are absolved.

The Place Where You Can Feel Free To Start Shit is everything outside of The Place Where You Can't Start Shit, and everything in this place is approached as a challenge because the DM is expected to challenge the players in as many interesting ways as they can conjure. Some players do grow into the attitude that everything out here is trying to either rip them off or kill them, but that's not necessarily the case. However, if a creature is placed in TPWYCFFTSS, the general assumption is that it is ready to throw down with the player characters, and there will be little to no consequence for the latter which the former cannot force upon them.

And everything, from the creature's goals to its religious affiliation and its alignment, is post hoc worldbuilding cruft that flows from its existence as a game piece in the place where you can start shit.

Exactly. And this idea that stuff in the adventure zone is free pickings for players is absolutely part of the buy-in for D&D. If you don't accept that buy-in and try to change it will start unraveling.

As a corollary, it is incumbent upon us as players to strive to create game tokens that are going to be acceptable targets which do not resemble real-life populations.

That last point is a great example of why I (as DM) write and play goblins and orcs as People you shouldn't kill unless they attack you first, because the history of using them as acceptable targets for slaughtering and pillaging has picked up some uncomfortable racialized baggage over the years

But I LOVE a good Ogre, because despite being a sentient creature, Ogres and Trolls are still generally within the mythical genre of "evil monster it's okay to kill because it wants to eat you or whatever," rather than being a proxy excuse for committing manifest destiny against a perceived Subhuman Other

but if you're even semi-vigilant about not uncritically recreating that dynamic, then buying into D&D as first and foremost a Kill Stuff Get Loot game does in fact solve some major problems

You really just have to begin by reckoning with the fact that traditional Dungeon Delving Adventurers are, whatever else you might tack onto them, the sort of people who are okay with putting themselves in danger and committing violence while plundering tombs and ruins. This does not paint them in a very good light as people, and it can actually be fun to lean into that and let them be kinda shady and have selfish motivations

But if you start with that same underlying concept, while insisting that they also must be assumed to be Heroes who are committing Justified Violence for heroic ends? You're accidentally backing yourself into playing a paramilitary cop for hire, which is much much worse than just accepting that you're a Grave Robber With Extra Steps

Not to "play more games" this discussion, but it's so very helpful to recognise and acknowledge the implicit assumptions of D&D's gameplay arc not simply to address problematic narrative themes within D&D, but also conversely to recognise when you're carrying those assumptions into other games with different assumptions.

One of my biggest complaints last year was how one of my youth groups would treat City of Mist (a methodical, magical modern-day investigation game) as just D&D in a funny hat; the game doesn't do "combat", per se, the rules only really covering quick, one-or-two round altercations between investigators and threats, and yet my players insisted on gearing up their psych doctor and bartender like they were magically-enhanced SWAT officers.

This concept of The Place Where You Can Feel Free to Start Shit is such a thing in pulpy adventure games like D&D, you find players not only ignoring the dodgy political messaging of the Shit you often find yourself Starting, but oftentimes people cannot feel like they're even playing the game at all unless there is Shit to Start.

Okay specific things I like about D&D 4e:

if you read the actual DMG talking about noncombat challenges, it's literally fiction-first, fail-forward writing. It specifically describes the idea that you shouldn't make players roll to overcome things unless both outcomes are interesting and instead you should be working to make things interesting along the way. Failures shouldn't close doors, it should change routes.

4e's DMG is one of the best written in the business, since it didn't assume you'd learn how to DM from watching your friend Gerry do it and being mad at how bad a job he did.

Oh absolutely, and I feel the DMG2 takes it over the top! DMG2 has a whole section on allowing failed encounters create story branches! It's unsurprising since it was written by Robin D. Laws who designed HeroQuest (not the memetic boardgame but the RPG) because some of the advice and diagrams feels like it was taken straight out of HeroQuest. Like look at this:

And there's sections on collaborative worldbuilding, vignettes, all sorts of shit. The 4e DMG2 is by far one of the best DMGs I've ever read and a lot of it is universally applicable to almost any RPG!

While I'm on my 4e hype train, let me just point out that 4e also took 3e's use of keywording and took it into some unexpected directions, to the point where as a DM it was easy to see synergies between different types of creatures and even creatures and hazards! As a DM you got to express system mastery in a way most games don't allow for, and it was very similar to how players would do it (i.e. picking options with synergies built in) but the math was more or less balanced to still slightly skew towards the players' side.

Like, when I realized that the Aquatic tag many creatures had actually gave a bonus to attacks while in water instead of just giving them freedom of movement in water suddenly made the gears spin in my head as I imagined a combat utilizing the traditional room filling with water hazard (presented in DMG2) to add a ticking clock where the combat would become more difficult as it progressed. Shit was insane

4e is what actually got us into DnD initially, and part of why we've always been so disappointed with 5e. The way it actually kept the martial classes cool and fun to play at a table of wizards and spellcasters made you feel like could actually choose them for reasons beyond RP/team balance.

The 4e fandom is dying, reblog if you're a 4rry!

Okay, more 4e hype: in the context of WotC D&Ds, the action economy of Standard, Move, Minor is really simple and intuitive. It's literally effortless to teach someone.

4e formalized Defender as a role and went on to shower it with love, seriously, marking is so much fun, and I just love what each of the Defenders bring to the table (I want to play a Warforged Warden some day).

Vicious mockery was introduced in 4e and in addition to that Bards in 4e kicked a lot of ass. They were also a Defender's best friend with misdirected mark.

Given how much a fan Matt Coville is of 4e, I really hope the MCDMRPG takes a lot of what that edition had going on and runs with it.

I feel really smart about something I said in a conversation elsewhere:

RPGs are kinda like a shared narrative created between the players. But the game itself is also a participant. And the game has opinions about where the story should go.

Sometimes all the players agree that the story should go in a certain direction, but once the rules are engaged the rules themselves say that the story should go in a different direction.

If you always end up overriding the game's idea of where the narrative should go, you're basically ignoring the game's input on the story. The game is no longer a participant.

So, you know, show some respect and let the game itself have a voice.

(and like this doesn't always mean "let's ignore this rule because it's boring." Like, the game probably doesn't think it's boring, because why else would the rule be there. This is more about fudging rules-mediated outcomes for "rule of cool" or because some other outcome would be "better." Nah, let the game take the reins every once in a while.)

this is absolutely how i think rules and rulebooks should be treated, as co-authors and fellow players -- i say something to this effect in my first underside dev diary:

I was reminded of this again while reading another game yesterday. The section on how the game's rules should be utilized basically said "If the game is flowing naturally from the storytelling then you don't have to roll the dice," which is fair, but... I don't know, it feels like a bit of a cop-out and an admission that the rules might produce results that go against the desired narrative? Which isn't great to be honest.

It reminds me of a really interesting discussion about Apocalypse World I read recently: the imperative "To do it, do it" written into AW's rules is often read as "to make a move your character must do a thing that triggers the move," but could also be read as "when your character does a thing that triggers a move you must make the move!" Because the mechanics are pretty much the game chiming in and saying "I have something to say here!"

And ultimately it speaks to me of a) people wanting their games to produce certain types of stories but have picked games that actively resist those types of stories, or b) people planning their sessions in such a way that engaging with the mechanics in certain places may drive their games off the rails. I'm actually somewhat sympathetic to the latter because I understand prep can be hard on the GM, but I think ignoring the rules to preserve the integrity of your prep actually does everyone at the table a disservice, because it limits player agency and expression through the mechanics.

Anyway.

I very much agree with this. My design philosophy treats the final game as a collaboration between the players, GM (if applicable), and designer (via the rules text). I wouldn't suggest they're co-equal partners -- the live participants can assert themselves in stronger and more bonding ways than the static system -- but if you extract one, it is no longer the same game. To ignore parts of a game is to accept responsibility for how the game experience changes, even unintentionally, and if you aren't intimately close with a system you likely won't see all of those reverberations to take responsibility for them.

The mentioning of ApW's golden rule is insightful. "To do it, do it" is always paired with "If you do it, you do it." You can activate rules by doing the fiction, but doing the fiction also activates the rules even if that isn't the intention. This isn't even an alternate reading, this is ALSO explicit text.

I find that treating the system as a separate partner at the table, rather than a box of tools to reach into or ignore, helps strengthen the game experience. Listen to the system. It does things the way it does for a reason, for a million reasons. This is especially important for GMless games, where the system provides a power-equalizing force to keep the game on-theme. Doubly so for solo games, where treating the system as a partner is the only thing between random thinking and the intended/expected game experience.

This isn't related to anything recent it's just a thought about a couple things that happened earlier this year that I didn't manage to put into words back when it was relevant.

While I sympathize with the way D&D bloggers start posting stuff like "teehee don't click this link, it will take you to a PDF of the Player's Handbook, DMG, Monster Manual and Scrimblo Brimblo's Guide To Scrunkly, remember not to click this link because it's illegal!!!" every time WotC does something naughty, because there will never be a circumstance under which I don't consider piracy to be based as fuck, I also think pirating D&D material doesn't really do much to really challenge WotC.

The reason WotC feels like it can get away with so many shitty practices is not only because they make a shitload of money selling D&D products, but also because D&D's monolithic brand recognition has engulfed public perception of the entire hobby and as long as they can keep it that way they know D&D is gonna keep being the product most newcomers to the hobby are gonna initially flock to and very rarely branch out from, and that's not gonna change as long as so many people keep playing exclusively D&D stuff even if it's pirated.

So like... Yeah, it's great to get your friends to pirate every D&D material and not give WotC any money, but it'd be even better to use WotC doing something shitty as an opportunity to branch out and maybe consider giving a chance to that one weirdo in the group who keeps offering to run a campaign in a different RPG that everyone keeps saying no to because y'all already learned D&D and it looks like too much work to learn a different system.

If you don't know where to start or what's out there.... you can always hop into my ask box!

I am contractually obligated to offer D&D when people want to learn games, but it is always, always with a covert "Play other games" bias