Mainly I make ttrpgs

"We go on lunch, that's what."

"But what about the..."

"The dragon will leave when she's good and ready."

"Shouldn't we, I don't know, get her to move?"

"...Do you want to go up there and poke a dragon?"

"..."

"Proiritising roleplaying" doesn't mean anything – it's a piece of vacuous marketing text targeted at people who've constructed their identity politics upon arguing about the correct way to pretend to be an elf.

The basic problem is that the term "roleplaying" is, itself, not well defined; in practice, it means whatever the person trying to sell you something wants it to mean. Here, for example, by invoking the presence or absence of "mechanical social encounter support" as the distinguishing feature of self-styled "RP forward" systems, you seem to be implicitly defining "roleplaying" to mean "set-piece encounters in which a player character attempts to persuade an NPC to do something for them without resorting to violence". Is this justified? Is playing out the process of hitting each other with sticks not "roleplaying"? Why not?

What most people mean when they toss the term "roleplaying" around in the context of tabletop games is something in the vicinity of "roleplaying is when we do things I'm interested in doing, and not-roleplaying is when we do things I'm not interested in doing". As all game rules are unavoidably opinionated about what player characters ought to spend their time doing – indeed, arguably this is the only thing that rules can meaningfully express opinions about! – the question of "does this system 'prioritise roleplaying'?" is typically reducible to "does this system agree with me about what kind of game I'm playing?". Games are then sorted into "priorities roleplaying" and "does not prioritise roleplaying" based on which side of the answer to that question they fall on for the person doing the sorting.

This is the ultimate root of a lot of this "the best sessions I ever had never touched the rules at all" stuff. For a variety of reasons, many people have genuinely never experienced playing a tabletop RPG whose rules agree with them about what sort of experience of play they ought to be having, and in some cases they can't even imagine what that would look like. If you and the system you're using disagree so badly about what kind of game you're playing that "engaging with the rules" and "engaging with my desired experience of play" are mutually exclusive activities, it's not surprising that ignoring the rules entirely would be your best play.

Actor Stance is when a player is making decisions as their character. They are acting only on the character's knowledge and motivations. I think this is what a lot of people (from a DnD5e or similarly trad background) are referring to when they say "roleplay" while meaning "outside combat".

Author Stance is when a player is making decisions as the player, then (optionally) justifying those decisions retroactively to fit their character. They are making the most optimal decisions they can within the game system to meet the combat's win condition, and "acting" is secondary.

So when you have a game like DnD5e, where there is a complicated system full of optimal system decisions to make, it behooves a player to drop out of Actor Stance and into Author Stance. Or at the very least, heavily prioritize the latter over the former. When combat starts, "roleplay" generally stops, because players switch Stances to meet the demands of the strategy board game part of the system.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of stuff outside of combat in 5e has very little optimal decision-making to do -- just pick a Skill and roll a die. This low complexity means the player more easily stays in Actor Stance. I think that if 5e approached social situations with same kind of complex, optimization-encouraging methods that it does with combat, you'd see a lot of people complaining that there's no "roleplay" in these situations, because thinking as the character (Actor Stance) becomes secondary to thinking as the player (Author Stance), strategizing out-of-character to ensure better outcomes.

The thing is, players of 5e are doing this all the time in non-combat situations already -- my Intimidation Skill is really high so I'll try that approach -- it's just that the decision-making there is quick and simple enough not to disrupt a player's Actor Stance.

In games that do non-combat complexity well, you as a player will be dipping briefly out-of-character to think about optimal strategies through the lens of the player, just like you would with 5e Skill checks. The trick to keeping the "roleplay" feeling is to be well-versed enough in the system that you can quickly and confidently switch lenses without disrupting that Actor Stance feeling.

So, system mastery is important to make complex social rules "still feel like roleplay" (but a completely different kind of system mastery from what you might expect, if you're only well-versed in trad games), and a game also needs to be designed so that its social scenarios are not slow, technical slogs on the level of 5e combat.

Just finished an art piece for my group's Fabula Ultima TTRGP game! Our campaign's story is set in a post apocalyptic, techno-fantasy world, as we fight against corporate city-states that seek ancient AIs and the return of lost magic. Happy I was able to draw our chaotic characters together for the first time!

From left to right: we have Frost (Elementalist/Loremaster), a noble scholar from a island haven of magic. Greg (Fury/Rogue), a normal man sent by time travel to the far future. Ballow is my character (Pilot/Guardian), a uploaded ghost knight piloting Melida, a stolen robotic steed. The hive mind R.A.T. (Merchant/Tinkerer), a sentient swarm of robotic advertisement telecommunication drones. Finally there is Clay (Floralist/Spiritist), a monk seeking hidden magical secrets for his mysterious Oracle.

A lot of D&D5e defenders on here like to claim that asking someone to learn a new system is "gatekeeping" somehow, but I'd argue that acting like one game is emblematic of the entire medium to the exclusion of people who don't click with that one game is way more meaningfully a form of gatekeeping, even if it's fully unintentional.

What are the last 4 TTRPGs you played?

For me?

Dragon Slayers (gm)

Exquisite Biome (gmless)

Eat God (player)

Dragon Keeper (gm, original game)

Temeraire RPG (gm, quickstart)

Fabula Ultima (player)

*Honorable mention: Dawn the RPG (session zero, will gm soon)*

Ideal number of columns in layout is determined by two things: page size and text size.

A lot of people in indie TTRPGs have never done layout, and especially never done layout for print. When it comes time to put the words in a book they just pick out a template and try to make it look like whatever their ideal for a "real game" is, without considering actual text and page size, only retrieve text to page size. And sometimes that leads to oversized two-column text on tiny pages, and other times tiny text in a single columns spanning a whole letter-sized page.

Choice to use one, two, or even three or more columns should be based on what best serves the book. D&D books are two-columns because they are big books, Apocalypse World books are single-column because they are small books.

The most important element of layout is readability. Two-column layout isn't just about getting more text on the page—although it can drastically reduce overall page count—it's about making that text more readable. For example, why is this Tumblr post confined to a single narrow column when it could very easily span the whole screen? Because it's easier to read multiple short lines of text than it is to read fewer long lines, and this is especially true when attempting to digest a lot of information. For another, look at bibles, which regardless of size are usually two columns because that best contains the specific text.

Personally, I make most of my books in a small format with single-column text. That is because they are usually short and therefore do not need to cut down on page count, and assumed to mostly be read on a screen where an appropriately-sized single column document is easier to navigate because you never have to go back to the top of the page as you do with two-column layouts. However, if I am trying to match a style—as I have done many times in the past—I will use a two-column layout even if it's not required, because that is what the reader is going to be expecting.

This month's theme is

_______-naut; scientific exploration

Astronaut, psychonaut, chrononaut. This theme is all about travel and exploration. It also has a slight bent towards the scientific, implicit in many (though not all) of the ____-naut words. With this theme, think about documentation. Think about what it means to not just be in a space, move through a space; but to be immersed in it, subsumed by the subject of study. The subject, the study, and the state of being are one in the same.

This theme would be a great opportunity to do a take on many different types of speculative fiction, especially scifi classics. An Annihilation pastiche come to mind, bit just as easily a 2001: A Space Odyssey or Left Hand of Darkness would work just as well. This would also be a great time to stretch your legs as a world designer. Create a space to be immersed in. Fill it with texture and detail.

The challenge is

Simple layout/ .txt

This one's simple (rimshot.mp3). Make your game as simple as possible. Style it after an in world report, format it as an old monochrome crt display. Alternatively, really commit to the simplicity and make your game as a .txt file.

Come join Eternity in April