Shrine of the Turtle Priest
The Noodle Hack - TTRPG thoughts - Part 2
Continued from Part 1
Experiments
Experimenting with TTRPG play should take two forms. The first is, well, experimenting with the direct goals stated in the last post - abstaining from pre-designed plots, encouraging sandbox play and self-determined goals, introducing domain play, inviting guests, etc. The second is experimenting with the game rules, either via house rule or trying new games (or, realistically, a combination of both). In my view, the latter is not absolutely necessary for the former, but I do not believe that D&D 5e as is "traditionally" played is the optimal game rules for my purposes. And if I'm going to start hacking away at the rules, I might as well try out a lot of different games to learn what the possible modes of play are, and maybe find something that fits my goals "out of the box", or at least closer to it.
The nice thing about experiments is, declaring something an experimental one-shot earns a lot of grace from your friends. Telling people, "I am going to run this obscure bespoke system for a genre you do not care about" is maybe less compelling than "I want to try out this new game because I am excited by its inventory system, and while I do not plan to import that into our d&d game I think it'll be interesting to see how it differs, and maybe it'll inspire us in some way." Plus, most people just want to play, and are happy if someone will referee a game, even if it's not their preferred game.
At least, that's what I'm telling myself. :)
How to start?
Some experiments are easy. Simply wait for one of your regular players to go on vacation, and tell the rest "Whoever is still free, let's still meet. We'll be playing Mausritter. It's extremely easy to learn, and we can make characters in 5 minutes. It'll be fun, you get to play as mice!" Then when the day comes, you run a one-shot. Nobody cares if you get the rules wrong, because they havent read the book, and they know you're learning too. And you can inject whatever nonsense you want, and it's fun, because it's novel and the stakes are low.
Other experiments are harder. I do not know, for example, how to try out a system for multi-month, real-time tracked Domain tier play, without some level of commitment and buy-in from a set of players. There are a few system experiments I want to try in this manner.
One way I hope to run these tests is through solo roleplaying (itself an experiment for me, but which is perfect for testing out hex crawls, random encounter procedures, dungeon timing procedures, etc!).
On top of that, at one point, I had considered sneakily and maliciously inject myself into a friend's existing campaign - running a basic Domain play system alongside his campaign, WITHOUT us informing his players of my involvement, but giving hints that an adversarial faction is participating on the side. And then, when they confront their foe, I would join as a guest player and try out some PvP. Let's go freeform!
In the intervening months since this post was first drafted and now, as I edit and publish, the latter experiment never manifested. But the solo experiment is about to begin.
Considering the Nerds
For most of my experiments, I am diving into the OSR/NuSR space. This is for a few reasons. These games are easy to learn, easy to play with little prep, easy to make characters. This gives me the maximum value-to-effort ratio, since I can run solo one-shots in an evening with various games and figure out what rules systems or complete games I like. They are also eminently hackable, and are easier to run "meta-systems" in a satisfying way (Can you imagine trying to manage Domain play with level 15+ adventurers in 5e? They can teleport anywhere, execute kings and despots at their leisure, command armies of devas to raze market towns to the ground... and without spending any resources that dont replenish with 8 hours of sleep!)
At least in part, the OSR philosophy seems more suited to what I'm looking for. It features accessible, manageable adventures; requires learning only a few bespoke rules for your character's specialty; and is generally approachable for the casual player. But there's a downside. For many players, they need a certain level of crunch to feel satisfied. Some players want to play a rules-dense tactical skirmish battle game, which 5e is, and B/X simply is not. Now, I would argue that simple games often disguise a surprising amount of depth behind very simple systems, but it does seem obvious to me that there are more strategic decisions in some games than others. For all the mixed opinions that 4e has, from what I understand, it excelled at being a tactical combat game (even if it lacked in many other measures). You'll never get that from Mausritter, nor should you, since it is not even trying to achieve that.
I will henceforth use the word tacticians to refer to the players that desire complex tactical battle systems, and complex character-development decision trees that they can play with during downtime.
Tacticians are not wrong for wanting 15 bespoke features on their character sheet. They are not wrong for wanting to precisely determine positioning, choose weapons based on their enemy's AC and resistances, etc. Two of my most dedicated regular players are tacticians. Whatever happens, I want them to have no less fun than they are having right now.
What the OSR does seem to promise, and which I hope will bear out in my experiments, is a much wider plane of freedom for tactical and strategic non-combat play. For as much as 5e excels in letting you plan complicated and satisfying character builds, it is utterly shallow in its handling of many other aspects. What tactics are there in rolling "Dexterity (Stealth)"? Or rolling "Dexterity (Thieves Tools)"? How deep of a system is it when the rules allow for you to convince an NPC of an action with 0 roleplay and a high Charisma (Persuasion) roll?
To be clear, 5e doesn't pretend that it's a complicated trap-defusing simulator. (And OSR games, especially those descended from OD&D instead of B/X, don't give you mechanical support for that at all, either... but that's by design!) But when you have a rule system to resolve a scenario, the implication is that is all that is required. When the rules call for you to roll Dexterity (Thieves Tools) to disarm a trap, players feel cheated if you ask them "How do you disarm it?", since you don't also ask the Barbarian, "How do you swing your axe?" When a rule system is declared, it is not just providing an option for resolving that behavior - it's also implying that it is the way to do it to the exclusion of others.
As explored in conversation with one of my tactician players: "If you declare procedures or rules, you are inherently drawing player attention to those rules being the decision-space within which they can act. When your game has 10 rules for lockpicking and 1 rule for automobile repair, then your players know it is a game about lockpicking."
The OSR dogma, by contrast, says "When no rules are defined to disarm the trap, you have to figure out how to disarm the trap yourself, and only once the table feels satisfied that you have figured it out does the trap become disarmed." This is promised by, among others, Matt Finch's Old School Primer. Whether or not this will be borne out by actual play is to be seen. Whether or not this is enough to fill the void lost by complicated character builds is also to be seen. I suspect that this style of play will scratch some itches for the tactician, but I have a strong feeling it won't be enough. So, in my adventures forward, I must Consider the Nerd and explore what ways I can find a mode of play that is inspiring for all player kinds: the tactician, the casual, the roleplayer, the civilization strategist, and the puzzler.
