worldbuilding? neat

you can check out part 1 here and part 2 here

as always, this is about my personal experience learning ttrpg design, and i claim no particular expertise or authority on what constitutes "good" game design

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so far, i've discussed the games i drew on for the start of my ttrpg education. now let's talk about how to improve (when you need to/if you want to). now, i'll say i don't think "improving" is a great way to think about it. i prefer to think about it as "how to be aware of the tools you need to accomplish your design goals"

for some people, the three games i've discussed are plenty for them to get started. these people tend to like experimenting for themselves and then doing more research when they need help. (i fall in this category.) other people may want to read more before starting in earnest. this is also a smart way to go. (obviously you can go overboard with researching so much that you never actually start, but we are far from that place here.) either way, at some point you'll need more information than you currently have.

how do you find the wisdom you seek? the best answer is simply asking for help from people you look up to/trust. but i've never been good at asking for help, so uhhh this post exists

quick story time. i recently visited maryland to go to my partner's sibling's wedding. in a local comic shop's manga section, i saw this book. i was like, oh fun, it's a manga about kids playing a goblin slayer ttrpg.

but then, when i opened the book...

again, i'm not an authority on game design. i'm just sharing how i did it from scratch in case anyone else is starting from scratch too.

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i'm gonna take a whole post to talk about the FIRST indie TTRPG that opened my eyes up to what the genre could do outside of western fantasy dungeon crawls. it's an elegant 17-page TTRPG called Things, Eldritch and Terrifying. by s. gates (@/harpydora on twitter). i found it in the first trans rights bundle i bought on itch when i was getting into indie ttrpgs.

it's a one-on-one TTRPG where one player plays a human and the other plays an eldritch terror trying to gain access to our dimension. each has their own set of abilities and traits to choose from. you roleplay 5 scenes. after each one, the human awards the terror a token of favor or token of revulsion based on the interaction.

at the end, you draw from a playing card deck. the human gains a card for each token of revulsion. the terror gains a card for each token of favor. if the human has the highest card, the terror fails to make it in. if the terror has the highest card, the human invites them in.

i could go step by step and detail everything that's different between this game and, say, D&D or Pathfinder. but honestly i'd be here all day. TET could not be more different. it doesn't use dice, and in fact doesn't use a randomized resolution mechanic at all until the very end. the roleplaying determines the probabilities. and it's entirely possible that the human awards 4 tokens of revulsion and 1 token of favor, and the terror still draws the highest card. to me, it communicates that anyone can give into temptation, no matter how strong you think you are. it also communicates that this can be super hot. (i believe the author would agree with me lol)

the game's goal is to explore the intersection of horror and sensuality. in my opinion, it succeeds wildly. but i'm biased because my now partner and i used this game as an excuse to meet up for the first time IRL as a "yay we're vaxxed" thing. we're v happy and we're traveling to meet their extended family next week.

my point being it's a TOTALLY different paradigm of design. it opened my eyes SO much, and yet i've never heard anyone else talk about it.

my main takeaway: read small games. they can teach you a LOT, be full of depth, and have a BIG impact

corollary takeaway: YOUR small game is worth making

for example, my small game NIGHTHAWKS owes a lot to this game. and it's probably the most-played game of mine (as far as i can tell). i'll have a separate post talking about it soon.

let me say this first. i don't consider myself particularly well-versed in game design, and i learn well by doing and emulating. i design primarily by gut feel with a sprinkle of basic math. i'm sharing how i did it from scratch in case anyone else is starting from scratch and wants to learn.

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my top two "recommended reading" games are the first two games i read that i instantly fell in love with:

LUMEN by Spencer Campbell (Gila RPGs)

Wanderhome by Jay Dragon (Possum Creek Games)

the first is actually an SRD you can build your own games on. Spencer created a great system for fast-paced action games (probably 10X faster than 5e combat). LUMEN's simple dice core is what later influenced Caltrop Core's.

Wanderhome is a masterpiece. diceless and gmless. a game about home. about journeys. if you haven't already, read it and you'll know why it's on the list.

Image from Pexels.

I made a post a long while back about what advice you would give to new designers. My opinions have changed somewhat on what I think beginners should start with (I originally talked about probability) but I thought it might be useful to provide some resources for designers, new and established, that I've come across or been told about. Any additions to these in reblogs are much appreciated!

This is going to be a long post, so I'll continue beneath the cut.

https://gofund.me/a81040a8

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-clara-jeremy-rebuild-from-the-eaton-fire

Did you know that in Tangled Blessings, my magic academy horror storytelling game, you're assigned a house?

There's seven houses total! Here's the sticker sheet that features all the house crests!

Crowdfunding ends within HOURS!

A father's plea for peace for his children and his sick wife

Imagine a world where instead of raindrops falling from the sky, bombs rain down, and instead of soothing lullabies, the sound of warplanes fills the air. This is the harsh reality that my children, Mounir (6 years old) and Siraj (4 years old), and my wife, who is suffering from cancer, live in. We live in Gaza, a place where hope seems to be fading.

I am Mohammed, Rawaa’s husband, and I feel the heavy burden of ensuring a better future for them.

The war took my job, our home, the very essence of our existence. We are now living in makeshift tents, sharing what little we have in this besieged land. However, in the midst of all this devastation, my wife's illness bothers me greatly because there is no treatment for it.

Friends in Egypt have offered us a chance to escape this nightmare, but the path to safety is blocked by a daunting barrier: the border crossing demands $5,000 for each life to pass through.

I plead with you, don't let my children become victims of war.

Your contribution, no matter how small, could be the key to unlocking a future free from fear and filled with opportunities. Your assistance could mean the difference between life and death for my family. With your help, we can secure safe passage out of Gaza and begin the journey toward a better future. A future where peace and prosperity prevail.

Thanks for your support, and I'm grateful for any help you can give me during this difficult time.

To donate, visit the website below

👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇

https://gofund.me/aa7ade8f

There is a tendency to write settings - particularly for interactive media like ttrpgs, larps, etc - that are essentially gender-blind, where you can create whoever you want without that having an effect on the game. The decision to be gay, or a woman, or trans, or a gay trans woman with pink hair is an aesthetic choice that will not give you a meaningfully different experience in the game.

This rather kneecap's the setting's ability to tell queer stories, imho. If we take it as read that queerness refers to gender- and sexuality-based identities and behaviours that fall outside of the societal norms, then the experience of falling outside those societal norms is (rather tautologically) a key element of queerness.

So, in a completely gender-blind setting, one can't - tautologically - be gender-nonconforming. There is no expectation to conform to. The experience of queerness, of being outside of societal norms, becomes null and void. Such a setting will feature homosexuality, but it won't feature gay pride, and nor will it need to as none of the societal forces that led to the pride movement exist.

This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, a world where one is not oppressed for one's identity is an enjoyable world to explore for what should be obvious reasons. On the other hand, it becomes impossible to tell (say) a coming-out story in a world where there's no closet to be in to begin with.

There is also the element that whilst a setting may say its gender-blind, it's still written and played in by people from the real world, who still subconsciously inherit real-world biases, and this can be reflected in the world.

While (say) women might have just as much right to political power as men, if in practice the people with political power are disproportionately men, that sexism is still present. Far from removing it, the gender-blindness of the setting simply obfuscates it, and often actively proves an obstacle to addressing it; one cannot call somebody out in character for sexism in a setting where sexism doesn't exist, no matter how sexist they're being.

(Similar biases around sexuality, transness, polyamory, kink, aceness, etc also creep in).

(In many cases, this can also apply to other axes of marginalisation, such as race, etc. However, in a lot of settings this doesn't apply the same way. Many fantasy settings are deeply opinionated about a character's ancestry; see the D&D skull-callipers explaining that elves are just more intelligent and agile than everybody else, and this being a mechanically enforced fact in the world.)

Anyway, listen up: it’s possible to do prep without your prep being based on “what will happen in the session.” You as a GM can plan places for your party to go and explore, or events that are currently taking place around them. The “what will happen” is what the group decides to do in those places and situations.

place descriptions

NPC lists

questions about what happens (is the robot actually a god? What if their guide starts to mistrust them? What if the next room tries to eat them?) - these are not commitments, these are possibilities

things your characters want (Alice wants to stab something, Bob wants a father figure to bond with) so you can remember to give it to them

leading questions to ask your players (“Hey Alice, why do you hate this city so much? Hey Bob, what’s one good thing you can always get at the Toad & Whistle?)

roll tables of funky little items that they could pick up

event timelines & clocks (unless players do something about a, b will happen)

i’m part of d20 writers for palestine (and there are also artists and editors!)! for PWYW of at least $5 or pricing for a specific minimum fic length, you can make a custom request :) it doesn’t have to be d20 or even fanfiction; if you want me to write your OCs, i’m happy to!

So. For a game to be queer, it needs to care about queerness, and the things that constitute queerness. It needs to care about gender and gender roles and identities in society, and it needs to care about romance and sexuality and relationships involving them, and the way society responds to these things. Gender and sexuality need to matter to the game in order for it to be a queer game.

Now. 'Care about' is loosely defined here. Certainly, mechanics that involve these things (see: the Monsterhearts Turn Somebody On mechanic) indicate that the game cares about these things. But also, if the game's setting and expected patterns of play care about these things (see: the way Changeling puts a strong focus on romances as an expected element of play), it cares about these things even if they aren't mechanically defined; setting design is an element of game design.

So.

As a first example, let's take Monsterhearts, a game in which teenagers messily flirt with each other and work out who they are, which has mechanics which care deeply about romance and sexuality, and which explicitely sets out to tell stories about queer characters where their queerness drives the narrative. It is, quite unambiguously, a queer game.

Next, then, Pathfinder. What does Pathfinder care about? Well, it's an adventure game. It's a game where a mixed bag of skilled professionals go somewhere dangerous, and after various exciting (probably violent) encounters, come away stronger; along the way, there will probably be baddies who need stopping. It cares about the physical health of characters, their resources, and their capabilities. It cares deeply about how the power of these characters compares to the obstacles a dangerous environment puts in front of them. It cares, among other things, about fighting. (I'm not saying this to knock adventure games: I play them a lot and really enjoy them). Pathfinder does not care about a characters identity except so much as it affects their power and powers. It does not care about the emotional tenor of the relationship between two characters. It doesn't care about gender and romance and sexuality. So, it cannot be a queer game; just a game you can be queer in.

And there's nothing wrong with that! I enjoy, play in, run and design games like that, where you go find a dungeon and try to get lots of treasure and not die. And, because I'm me, my PCs in those games are normally queer women, but the choice to have them be queer women is just flair, it doesn't affect the meat of the game; exploring dungeons.

Tangled Blessings: Echoes of Lost Electives launches tomorrow, September 3, on BackerKit!

>>> Click here to follow the project <<<

Tangled Blessings is my dark academia magic academy roleplaying game that features assigned houses, magic, and terrifying forces that don't want to see you graduate.

Tangled Blessings: Echoes of Lost Electives adds even more content. I invited 11 contributors including the 10 pictured below to add even more to the cursed school.

The base game only requires tarot cards -- no weird dice. Plus, you can play by yourself or with a friend who will take on the role of your academic rival. You don't even need a game master!

We've all worked really hard on the project, and I hope you consider checking it out! :)