Raving Luna

Shower thought (literal, not figurative, since I had the thought in the shower): RPGs as cars.

D&D would be one of those big, "Pavement Princess" style trucks. Hear me out.

For some reason, in this analogy, hauling people is roleplaying, and hauling stuff is wargaming. Those big trucks aren't actually that great at either, even though they try to look like they are. They also look like they are connected to old school stuff, even though it's mostly just branding.

OD&D would be like a classic pick-up truck. It's very obvious it was designed for hauling things, but sure, you can haul people too. I feel like

Savage Worlds is something like the Toyota Tacoma. A very reliable no-nonsense work truck.

AD&D is the panel van. Still very practical and clearly designed for hauling stuff, but starting to have some serious options for hauling people. And look what people can do with the art on the side!

D&D 3.5 is the SUV. It's clearly designed for hauling people, but it can haul stuff as well (though it's going to be a bit awkward).

Mork Borg and it's descendants are like the Latin lowriders. They are basically just old school cars, but their aesthetic gives them a whole dimension and culture of their own.

Fate is the mom-van. This thing is clearly designed for hauling people, but actually can move stuff better than people want to give it credit for.

"But Luna," you say, "if hauling stuff is wargaming, wouldn't trucks be wargames?" And no, because wargames would be the big hauler trucks, like 18-wheelers. You could put people in there, but most people don't.

I'm playing Citizen Sleeper again, and it got me thinking about my next campaign (just started one, but there's always a next one). I've been thinking about running a dystopian sci-fi game anyway, since I've gotten my friends a bit interested in the genre.

So, I want you to think about something. Have you ever noticed how absolutely insane 80s horror movies were? Like, they were both crazier and somehow more believable than anything anyone does anymore. There was a strange sort of magic that existed in the 80s, and it was not good. At best, it was mayhem. But it got so much worse than that. What if, the reason we stopped seeing that sort of thing, is because someone locked it all up. There was some convergence, some great thing, and all the absolutely insane evil weirdness that existed in the 80s got locked up in a box at the bottom of the ocean or something. (This, of course, left the sleeker darkness of the 90s being the only evil still around). The more "looney toons" evil had to follow the rules that locked it up, but the earlier and later horror stuff did not.

People often say that the Mist Engine games (City of Mist, Otherscape, Legend in the Mist) are like Fate. Some even going so far as to say they are just Fate with a 2d6 resolution system. I don't agree.

Yes, Fate has aspects, which are superficially similar to the Mist Engine tags. However, the only similarity, really, is that they are something you write yourself to represent something about your character. The way the game mechanic is used is completely different.

Fate has skills (or approaches), and they are the core of what your character is or isn't good at. Aspects are secondary and function to augment the skills. Tags, and statuses (which are just more elaborate tags), are the foundation of how the Mist Engine runs, and also the building blocks which the whole thing is built with.

Fate also has Fate points, and the Fate point economy that goes with it. Fate aspects don't really need to be balanced. The fact that you have to spend a point to activate them keeps them from getting out of control. Mist Engine has no such limitation, and they require everyone to understand how they are meant to work and keep them within reasonable usage limits. You also only typically get a handful of aspects in Fate. Characters start with around 20 tags in Mist Engine games, and it goes up from there.

There was something I really didn't like about the Mechatron campaign for Mutant Year Zero. The premise is that there is a city where all the people died off, but the robots that served them continue on. The robots start becoming sentient, and there is a rift between them and ones that see this as a problem to be fixed.

However, there is a type of robot that looks human, and is sometimes even specifically designed to infiltrate and take the place of humans. So, how did the robots ever find out the humans were gone? Wouldn't the human-like robots just be living on as the people, with the robots being none-the-wiser? And if not, wouldn't there have been an event to make that not the case? I don't know. It just seems like a gaping hole in the logic of the setting. 

There are some very cool boardgames that have mechanics that would be very interesting to use for RPGs.

First thing is Five Parsecs from Home, which is a miniatures wargame. It has a really amazing enemy intelligence system that lets it be played as a solo game. Lots of wargames/boardgames have solo rules or enemy intelligence, but 5 Parsecs' rules are especially good, adding lots of flavor to how enemies act without adding a lot of work or "crunch". Not only is it great for solo gaming, but I think it works really well as a guide for newbie GMs. I was teaching someone recently how to GM D&D5e, and it was going really smooth until we got to running enemies in combat. They didn't have a wargame background, so all the tactics and strategy stuff is new to them. Now, if they had 5 Parsecs they could use that AI system to run enemies in combat, and that would at the very least give them a baseline that they could use if they want and ignore when they don't.

Firefly Adventures: Brigands & Browncoats is a miniatures boardgame that plays a lot like an RPG. It does "heists" (or whatever kind of clandestine activity) in a really interesting way that really fleshes it out. Pretty much everything it does could be used in an RPG, and it could really make sneaking around more exciting in "traditional" RPGs (stuff like Blades in the Dark doesn't need it). The initiative system is really interesting as well, and it helps make sneaking around tense as you're on a very engaging clock.

Pulp Alley is a miniatures wargame that has some amazingly creative scenarios. It's a wargame, but depending on the scenario, you might not be fighting anyone. Some scenarios are about meeting up with an informant before the enemy finds them. There's some where you are investigating a murder. There's quite a few where you are exploring somewhere, like a ruin or a jungle. It also has really great solo rules (and the thing is, the solo rules from these games have a vastly different feel than the solo RPGs I've seen). It's kind of funny, since it's so much like an RPG, the author decided to make an RPG version, so he asked the community what the game needed in order to be more like an RPG. No one could think of anything as it's basically all there already, so they scrapped the idea.

Battlestations 2e is a miniatures boardgame that is very much like an RPG (so much so I'm not sure where the line is). It has an amazing spaceship battle system, and is better than any RPG spaceship system I have ever seen. It's actually what the videogame FTL: Faster Than Light was based on. It's funny, because even though it never claims to be an RPG, there is a rule in the book where the author says "You will never need this rule if you are playing this as a boardgame." The only time it would possibly be useful is if you had a GM running it like an RPG.

Deadzone is a miniatures wargame/boardgame (there's actually some disagreement on what it qualifies as) and it has the BEST grid/measurement system. Period. So, the game uses 3" by 3" cubes. When you move to a cube, you can position anywhere within that cube. This gives you all the best qualities of grid and non-grid measuring, while actually being faster and easier than either. Which, includes making the use of 3d terrain extremely fun and easy. It's also the game that taught me why 3d terrain is so much fun, which is "true line of sight". TLOS is the most fun and immersive way to check for line of sight and cover, and really makes cool looking terrain feel useful and important. Definitely not as big of a deal for non-shooting games, but I still think it adds a lot.

Frostgrave/Stargrave has an amazing system for what I'm going to call "light PvP". It's mostly designed to be versus, but also has coop and solo modes, but the important thing is that the PvP isn't required, even in a normal game. The objective is to raid the ruins and get the loot, sometimes fighting NPCs and monsters. You want to attack the other PCs? Go for it, but that doesn't mean you are going to "win". You can focus on being defensive, or sneaky, or tricky, and not necessarily worry about how killy your team is, and still have a great time and even "win" (being aggressively killy can work too though). There are also some great campaigns, including some that are pseudo-coop (basically, everyone has to work together if they want to survive).

I just realized something that I have been feeling lately, but haven't really been able to put into words until now.

The OSR scene has changed. When it first started picking up a lot of momentum, it was largely focused on people making things. A horrible but smart person called it the "DIY RPG" scene. It was all blogs with bits of games and hacks and weird little systems.

Now, it is dominated by "purists". B/X is recommended to the point of exclusion. OSE, I think, played a bit of a role in this, but it's not just that.

This is really very obvious when you look at the split between OSR and NSR. People creating new things, and exploring new ideas, no longer felt welcome in OSR spaces. 

Too many OSR people think "if it's 'new' it's not 'old' so it obviously doesn't belong in 'OLD School Revival '". But, exploring new ideas is core to the hobby, and has been there since the beginning. Part of OSR was going back, but it was also about putting the power of the design back into GM hands. That's one of the major cultural shifts with D&D3.5. Unified rules where everything has a rule, and the players feel like they are invested in those rules. 

D&D 5e went through sort of the same arc (maybe every edition has, with perhaps the exception of 4e).

When it started, it was all about natural language, and rulings over rules. They even kept a slow release timeline so as not to have it become bloated too quickly. But bloat it did. And once again players are investing in the rules instead of the worlds their GMs are presenting. People stopped relying on GM judgement and started considering "Sage Advice" as official rules errata. The 2024 version of the rules are an extension of that. They lock down on the nebulous bits, hard coding the rules more.

Perhaps this is just the natural lifecycle of any rules system large enough to perpetuate itself the way D&D does.

I loved 5e. Still do, really. I'm just tired of running it. Not really because of the rules themselves (though, that's part of it), but because the rules are "known". The players don't play in my world, they play 5e. The players don't interact with my world, they interact with 5e. The players aren't invested in my world, they are invested in 5e.

This is why, often, when someone really gives my campaigns a chance, they don't usually mind trying new systems. Because the system is just a vehicle to present my world, and they trust that my world will be good.

This really goes back to why I started working on my “Rage Bait” campaign. It's not really new. I started thinking about it years ago. It comes from a desire to get back to what I loved about 5e. It both builds on the system's untapped potential, while also shedding some of the parts that I feel have become restrictive.

I do want what happens to surprise everyone at the table, the players and me both. But, an important distinction is that even though none of us expected it beforehand, it feels like it fits. "Of course!" my players say, about something they did not expect. It should seem obvious, in retrospect, but ONLY in retrospect. The 20/20 vision of looking back should be able to trick them into thinking it was the "right" answer, but when it is in front of them, they should NEVER feel like there is one right answer. It should be a bit of paradox, a bit of Schrodinger. 

It feels like so much to ask for. I would think it was ridiculous if I hadn't done it so many times.

I think there are a couple problems that occur.

One, is that when finding new people to play with, they don't often have this mindset. They essentially have to unlearn their experience with other GMs. This is almost definitely why I do better with players who are completely new to the system, if not the entire hobby.

The other problem is that over time, that 20/20 hindsight starts tricking them. They stop believing that anything was possible. It is easier, I think, for them to imagine I manipulated them into choosing the correct path, instead of believing that I could do what I do without one. Especially, I think, when they go and see that almost no other GMs are giving that kind of freedom.

I am considering what system to use to run my next campaign. I am a little burnt out on fantasy, so I am probably going to do something sci-fi. However, my players don't want it to be depressing, so I can't lean too heavily into Cyberpunk or Post-apocalypse stuff. I want to run something more narrative focused with lots of creative freedom, but I am a little apprehensive about trying to find new players with that kind of system.

Here are the top three I am considering at the moment:

Otherscape - a Mist Engine game. It's incredibly flexible, and I would run a Space Opera campaign with it. However, it's incredibly dense, and takes a lot of skill to run and play well. Characters can be so interesting, though, with how themes work.

Star Scoundrels - a space opera version of Freeform Universal. This is basically "Otherscape Light". It has all the freedom of Otherscape, but is a lot lighter, and simpler to run/play. Characters are not as deep/detailed as Otherscape though.