Moore Time To Play

A big part of the reason I don't talk a lot about Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition as a system is because it's been my experience that, as indie RPG designers, there's a constant temptation to treat a game's culture of play as something which emerges purely from its published text. It'd be super convenient if that were the case: if the ultimate source of the problem is bad game design, then it can be fixed with better game design. In practice, this framing leads people to prattle on about how playing trad RPGs causes brain damage while overlooking the rather more obvious economic incentives for why D&D's culture of play is the way it is.

All that in mind, I tend to look at it the other way 'round: the main problems with D&D5E as a system stem from a shared set of circumstances with its culture of play. Hasbro wants to market 5E as a universal entry-level game, and to that end, they've given Wizards of the Coast a mandate to produce an "evergreen" D&D which appeals equally to fans of all past iterations of the game. This goal is of course both impossible and absurd, and the result is a game whose rules are put together based mostly on vibes, with greater weight given to whether any particular feature is deemed to reinforce D&D's brand identity than to how it actually operates in play, or to how it interacts with other features that have been included in the same fashion.

In the most extreme cases, this leads to a text which pretends to have features it does not in fact possess. For example, 5E wants to have the vibe of a game which cares deeply about logistical play, in order to attract players who like that sort of thing; however, it's also terrified of imposing entry barriers that might interfere with maximising the number of people playing D&D, so you end up with stuff like lengthy stats tables of functionally identical weapons, an economy that denominates prices of adventuring supplies to the hundredth of a gold piece and stops being relevant by level three if you're running the gameplay loop as written, and subsystems for carrying capacity and consumable resource tracking which ask you to do a lot of math for a mechanical impact so insubstantial that it doesn't materially affect said gameplay loop at all if you simply leave it out entirely.

And he kept doing it. Scene after scene.

He spent the film expecting someone to make a joke about how unserious things were or to break the fourth wall or do some other self referential type thing.

Now, maybe I'm just at that point in my cycle or maybe I'm too delicate in general, but I literally teared up hearing that. Straight up cried a bit. It is so fucking sad that sincerity and genuineness is being bred out of people.

People say all the time 'this generation can't take anything seriously!' and really, is it any wonder? Younger people have been trained out of it. You are no longer encouraged to be genuine or show emotion or be honest. You are actively punished for it. In fact, you are almost guaranteed to suffer for it.

That is so fucked up. I'm sorry to go on a bit of a random ramble rant but it's so fucking gut wrenching to see younger people lose that element of themselves. You can't express your passion without being told you're 'crashing out' or 'cringe'. You have to live in this neutral state of fear of perception, and god forbid anybody step outside of it!

You're told you should only consume and succumb and be ironic and emotionless and cool.

Listen, if you're following me and you're like.... 25 or under, let's say. Please. I beg of you. Do not fall for this rhetoric. Please, for the love of all things, feel. Feel and create and be honest with yourself. Indulge in things that make you happy. Be sincere. Wear your heart on your sleeve. Do not let this hyper-capitalistic, hyper-consumerist, self-centred, individualist culture take that from you.

Dungeons & Dragons is owned by Hasbro. Yes, the same Hasbro that owns Monopoly and My Little Pony.

Hasbro wants D&D to be the only tabletop RPG that anyone plays.

In order to accomplish this, Hasbro needs D&D to be a universal entry-level game.

D&D is not a universal entry-level game.

All game rules are opinionated about how the game ought to be played, and as tabletop RPGs go, D&D's rules are more opinionated than most. This is not a flaw, but it's not what Hasbro needs.

D&D is also on the high end of complexity as far as tabletop RPGs go, and it's complex in a way that strongly rewards system mastery, so it's pretty far from "entry level".

Hasbro could produce a version of D&D that's at the very least less opinionated and more entry-level than it presently is, but they don't want to, because they've determined that certain rules features which run counter to both of those goals are critical to D&D's brand identity.

They also don't want to produce multiple versions of D&D tailored for different audiences, because they want every single D&D group to be a potential purchaser of every single D&D product; they'd be effectively competing with themselves for their own customer base if the published game was actually modular in any meaningful way.

So how does Hasbro square that circle?

Simple: they lie. They insist that D&D is in fact a universal entry-level game in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and back their advertising up with sponsored thinkpieces and podcasts and such to "prove" it.

Further, they've spent decades fostering a culture of play which conceals the gap between the game they're advertising and the game they're selling by ascribing any appearance that D&D isn't a universal entry-level game to the incompetence or malice of individual GMs.

The game the rules want to produce disagrees with the game the group wants to play? Nonsense – even the rankest beginner should be able to produce any experience of play using any set of rules, and if your GM can't, they're a Bad GM.

The game is hard to learn? No, it isn't – your GM is merely gatekeeping you. This wouldn't be a problem with a Good GM.

The upshot is that the published rules are more or less irrelevant with respect to achieving the desired experience of play, because they're operating within a culture of play which dumps 100% of the work of making that desired experience of play happen on the GM.

Indeed, much of what modern D&D presents as GMing best practices are really methods of working around the fact that the rules you're using disagree with you about what kind of game you're playing.

(It's not a coincidence that D&D's entrenched culture of play also insists that it's normal for GMs to be miserably overworked and treats GM burnout as a big funny joke, then turns around and loudly wonders why there's a constant GM shortage.)

The trick is, because you're still at least notionally using the rules of D&D, the fruits of all that GM labour are perceived as the product of "playing D&D", not of the GM's hard work.

In essence, Hasbro's business model for Dungeons & Dragons is selling you your own GM's labour with a D&D sticker on it.

It's a very neat trick, if you can pull it off.

Now, at this point some readers may be asking: well, sure, but not all GMs are doormats. What about "killer" GMs who do gatekeep and railroad their players and otherwise act like complete tyrants? I hear horror stories about them all the time.

Some players tend to ask witnesses the right questions ("Who did you see? When was it? What did they do? Did you notice anyone new? Anything suspicious?"), others not so much ("Did you see X? No? Well, okay then, goodbye"). I feel like some players have very little clue about how investigations work. Maybe it depends on how many detective tv shows one has watched, I dunno.

Anyway, I'll try making a short "manual" about detective work for the next game. It will brief players on which questions to ask, how to gather evidence, how to conduct an arrest and when they have the right to use lethal force.

Beyond The Fence Below The Grave is a supernatural horror investigative game set in old Scandinavia. A relationship between gods, creatures, and mortals has broken, and that broken relationship is causing the region to spiral into chaos, murder, and population collapse.

Beyond The Fence Below The Grave is also the smartest investigative ttrpg I've seen because of how reciprocal it is. You talk to the farmer. You ask a few questions. You don't suspect him of anything, and you don't know what to press him on, so you leave. That night he murders the baker ritualistically and flees into the woods. You find this out in the morning, and now you *know* he's involved. You start digging into him and the baker and asking better questions and from this little strand the mystery starts to unravel.

The thing is, mysteries in ttrpgs have a tendency to be key hunts. Go here, find this clue, use it here, unlock this clue, etc. It's functional but brittle. If the players miss a key and there isn't a backup the chain breaks.

In Delta Green, if the chain breaks the world usually ends.

Call Of Cthulhu is an early example of a mystery ttrpg, and Delta Green is very closely derived. It likes obfuscation. It likes red herrings. Its shotgun scenarios are often very very good because of how direct they are, but it can often struggle to re-track its investigators in longer stuff. Old CoC campaigns have this problem too (and Orient Express famously breaks if players take a simple, very logical action at any time outside of the final boss fight.)

In Dogs In The Vineyard, which is also a mystery rpg as well as a supernatural mormon western wuxia, the entire game structure is built around escalations. So when players investigate, something happens. When they fail to act on a clue, something happens. And this drives the game's tempo towards the satisfying part of the mystery: the reveal.

Think about it like playing with a cat. You might need to be really bold with moving the laser pointer the first time, but you can get more subtle with it as the cat acclimates. You can hide it behind furniture. And if the cat gets too confused, you can make it come back out. I'm not saying players are cats, but this is play at a basic level and the principles are scaleable.

Essentially, I do think a detective manual is cool and immersive (especially if written as an in-world object!) But I also think mysteries can run way way smoother if every time a player misses a clue, the next thing that happens is an adversary acts rashly and opens up a new avenue of investigation.

Now, to be TOTALLY fair, a large proportion of my player base are young, teenagers mostly, ranging from 14-22. It may be that they simply haven't learned YET how to craft a satisfying narrative but they'll get there. Still, it feels like there should at least be some kind of way to prime them on how to pick apart genre without suspending the game and doing an impromptu English class.

In much the same way as "did you see X?" doesn't often get witnesses to talk, failing to ask "have I been to all the places mentioned in the King's orders" or "what actually is the villain's plan that a freeze ray and explosives are both parts of it" will lead you to unsatisfying conclusions when it turns out you missed the Gorgon in the sewers or the bank heist timed to happen when the bomb threat was being dealt with.

I've talked in the past about how Hasbro's efforts to deceptively market Dungeons & Dragons as universal entry-level game have fostered a culture of play in which any appearance that D&D isn't a universal entry-level game is regarded as evidence that you have a "bad GM", and how, in order to avoid being a "bad GM", it's necessary to treat it as a normal part of the GM's responsibilities to constantly monitor the outputs of the rules and quickly paper over any gaps between the game the rules want to produce and the game the group wants to play, like a cartoon train conductor frantically constructing the very tracks along which the train they're conducting is riding.

The trouble is that most players aren't stupid, and readily see through the act. They (correctly!) observe that the particulars of the rules don't actually seem to matter all that much, because most of the desired experience of play is the product of the GM's constant interventions, rather than the product of interpreting the outputs of the rules – but instead of identifying this as a problem, they conclude (again, quite reasonably, as they've probably never seen it done differently) that this is what tabletop roleplaying is. The GM merely pretends to be moderating a game; in truth, they're a pantomime-leader whose job is to maintain the illusion that we're playing a game with rules, when in fact what we're really doing is guided improv theatre.

And of course there's nothing wrong with guided improv theatre – it's a fine pastime, and one I've enjoyed myself on many occasions. However, it does put folks who really do want to play a game in a bind, because now there's this insurmountable communication barrier. You can say "I want to play a game, and these are the rules of that game", and receive what seems to be enthusiastic agreement with that premise; however, a significant portion of the people expressing that agreement think they're participating in a bit of kayfabe, like very dedicated professional wrestlers who stay in character even outside the ring.

Critically, nobody is necessarily acting in bad faith in this equation. The folks who don't bother to learn the rules because they think games aren't real mostly aren't fucking with you on purpose; they honestly thought they were yes-anding your improv prompt by pretending to care about the mechanics of play, and when they discover that you really do expect them to do all that fiddly dice math, from their perspective it genuinely looks like you were the one misleading them. It's just a fucked up culture of play garbling all the signals in both directions.

Yeah, big name "actual play" podcasts that pretend they're not scripted and workshopped to hell are a big contributing factor, though I wouldn't classify them as distinct from Hasbro's marketing apparatus so much as one of the most visible arms of that apparatus. The fact that Hasbro isn't paying them directly doesn't mean they aren't serving the brand.

Maaaaaan. So I'm DMing two DnD 5e games at the moment. One of them is a high level combat focused megadungeon with very experienced players, while the other is more open and has more RP with a mix of experienced and new players. I always feel way more drained after a session running the latter game than the former. And I think you really helped me see why. I'm DEFINITELY having to do a ton of track-laying while running that game, because it's such an unfocused game. I feel way more like I have to be an entertainer who's always the one responsible for my players' fun, rather than expecting them to make their own fun using the rules of the game, like the players in my other group do.

Hey all, I've been running this blog under this name since the great wave of RPGIdeas blogs in 2017.

However, I've also just registered my Professional GMing under a business name in Australia; I'm on Facebook now as "Moore Time to Play".

I'm wondering whether I should capitalise on how many of you have come on board here and change my blog over to support the new business?

*drumroll*

That you don't care!

But also the yes vote scraped in a small margin for second place.

Going forward, provided I can secure the name, this blog will be rebranded under the name "Moore Time To Play".

Hey all, I've been running this blog under this name since the great wave of RPGIdeas blogs in 2017.

However, I've also just registered my Professional GMing under a business name in Australia; I'm on Facebook now as "Moore Time to Play".

I'm wondering whether I should capitalise on how many of you have come on board here and change my blog over to support the new business?

It's not me that has anything against GMs. There's a pervasive disrespect for the time, energy, and enjoyment of GMs present in the majority of TTRPG spaces.

People love to say “it’s just a game” while stacking more and more work onto the GM’s shoulders. It’s selfishness, and often a contempt for TTRPGs in general.

The purpose of a GM isn’t completely universal across all TTRPGs that use a GM role, hell a lot of TTRPGs don’t even seem to know why they have them in the first place, but usually the purpose of a GM is to handle scenarios that the game rules don’t account for, and handle procedures that the other players are not supposed to be privy to.

Over the years, more and more responsibilities have been put on the generalized GM role: sole rules memorizor, level designer, bespoke world creator, bespoke storyteller, scheduler, host, etc.. It has morphed into being a job as much if not more so than an activity to do with your friends. GMs have been dropping like flies to “GM/DM Burnout” for a decade or more and people willing to even go near the GM role are an endangered species.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that while, yes, the rules of a TTRPG are technically changeable and nobody is going to kick down your door if you don’t play them correctly, they do serve a purpose, and that is, simplified, to produce certain outcomes of gameplay.

A game’s rules cannot account for every possible situation that may come up in something so open as a tabletop roleplaying game, and one of the strengths of TTRPGs is that when the rules don’t account for something, human players can pick up the slack. In a traditional challenge game like every edition of D&D, this slack and the privilege to pick it up is by default handed over to the GM. This is because in a traditional challenge game that slack is often only handlable with that knowledge that other players are not meant to be privy to.

Since so many people are allergic to playing anything but D&D, even when they clearly don’t want the gameplay which D&D is geared to produce, this privilege instead becomes a curse for the GM. All of the scenarios and characters that D&D(or any TTRPG) is simply not intended to be built to accommodate are seen as “the slack for the GM to pick up” instead of “things that are outside the scope of the game.” It’s going to a coffee shop and telling the barista, who hasn’t trained in pizza, to make you a pizza. “A good barista could make it work, this is a food vendor so I’m supposed to be served the food i order,” even though the barista isn’t trained to make pizza, and the coffee shop does not stock the necessary ingredients for it.

Except the GM isn’t even getting paid minimum wage, they’re voluntarily taking on the most high-responsibility role of a group activity for you. Even if you do convince them through the shame of thousands of “a good GM could make it work, a good GM never says no to what a player wants” posts to make you a pizza, it won’t be a good pizza and it won’t go well with the other items on the menu. And even if it turns out to be a good pizza (because bad pizza is still usually pretty good pizza, not because it’s actually a good pizza) it won’t really be the coffee shop’s pizza, it’s the barista’s pizza. Once you go far enough, creating so much slack for the GM to pick up, you aren’t playing D&D anymore, you’re playing The GM. After a certain point the GM is doing way more work than the rules.

When I brought this up and mentioned how it was kind of disrespectful to the amount of prep I had put into writing a pretty open scope adventure I was met with responses questioning how I had been a GM for so long if I wasn't able to do this, and saying a good GM shouldnt "rail road" players.

King: Excellent. What are they like?

Servant: One of them is a dragon-lady.

King: Interesting. Those are rare around these parts.

Servant: Another is a goblin paladin.

King: Not a role you usually see goblins in.

Servant: A third is a purple-skinned tiefling.

King: I didn't even know they come in that color.

Servant: The last one is a sapient gelatinous cube.

King: What. How did these four even meet?

I had a little party today and literally half the people who had RSVPed yes just no-showed without saying anything.

It ended up being a delightful event with some of my favorite people and I had a really good time, but I can't help but feel a bit hurt by my friends who said they would come and just...didn't.

Even beyond my feelings, I had put a LOT of work into preparation, so there was way too much food.

Which is rude as hell.

And the reverse is also why you SHOULD say if you're coming and not show up randomly without warning, if they haven't planned for your attendance there won't be enough stuff for you(like food.