@batmanisagatewaydrug @utracjuszka

Candela Obscura is the strawman put forward in this post, but it’s a game that actually exists:

a scene from one of the first lancer sessions i played :]

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.

As noted above, all game rules are opinionated about what kind of game they wanted to produce. This isn't just a matter of setting (though setting-neutral games are often misleadingly called "universal" games), but also a matter of the basic structure of the narrative which emerges when you follow the rules.

The rules of Dungeons & Dragons is not less opinionated than those of your average indie RPG, and in fact are more opinionated than most. (And again, having strongly opinionated rules is not something that's wrong with D&D; it's merely something that's inconvenient for Hasbro's marketing goals in a way they're unwilling to address.)

In brief, D&D really, really wants your game to be a sword and sorcery dungeon crawl. If the GM is using the framework of play furnished by the rules at all, or if the players are responding to the rules' player-facing incentives even a little bit, it's going to squish your game into something dungeon-crawl-shaped.

(This should not be surprising; it's literally in the name!)

The rules of D&D being opinionated in this way tends to fly under the radar for a couple of reasons, one less problematic and one more so.

The relatively benign reason is that many popular RPG premises are not done any great violence by being squished into the shape of a sword and sorcery dungeon crawl.

A cyberpunk smash and grab caper? Basically a dungeon crawl already.

A special forces op in a modern military game? That doesn't need to be shaped like a sword and sorcery dungeon crawl, but it can be shaped like one and remain intelligible as what it's supposed to be.

Gritty logistics-driven survival horror? Not inherently dungeon crawl shaped, but the two genres are compatible – a game can be both at the same time, as video games like Fear & Hunger and Look Outside demonstrate. (Indeed, Look Outside's apartment building follows the structure of an old school D&D megadungeon nearly beat for beat!)

Thanks to D&D's pervasive cultural influence informing what people expect a tabletop RPG to be, as long as this kind of compatibility is present, many folks won't even notice their intended premise is being squished into the shape of a sword and sorcery dungeon crawl.

If your chosen premise isn't compatible in this way, or if the group notices what's happening and decides to push back against it, though? That's where the sleight of hand I alluded to above starts to come into play.

Remember: a Good GM™, even a total novice, ought to be able to use any set of rules to produce any desired experience of play, right?

So get to work!

i.e., just as much of the game's putative approachability is the product of Hasbro selling the players their GM's labour in a D&D-shaped box, much of D&D's putative flexibility is the product of the GM being sold their own labour in a D&D-shaped box.

To be clear, this is not militating against homebrew content or rules. Homebrew is perfectly cromulent, and certainly, some games are more or less structurally amenable to it (though modern D&D tends to fall on the "less" side).

The problem is that what we've got on our hands is a culture of play that wants to have its cake and eat it too: when doing extensive homebrew is treated as part of the GM's basic, entry-level responsibilities, it's easy to fall into the trap of thinking of the product of that labour as merely being a feature of the game.

psssst if you like:

GMless games

slice of life fantasy stories

minigames with mechanics and prompts tailored for specific types of scenes

cooking monsters

thinking about characters' lives after the big battle

I've been really nervous about uploading this, but it's been such a long time in the making and it's not just my own work.

This started as an attempt to hack the Root TTRPG a few inches sideways from heroic fables to dungeon crawling fantasy. Then it kinda got out of hand.

The result is a largely PBTA driven game that's my favorite thing I've ever worked on. It's big I know, but I hope if you peruse it you'll find some things you enjoy. If you read it, play it, or just have some thoughts on it, please tell me all about it!

Wysmen of Lubeck: Unplayably complex. 175$ hardcover only but looks great on a shelf. You played exactly one session with an old college friend that was very into Diocletian, and still think of it fondly.

Selkie Valley: Dev cycle with a body count. Every 6 months a dev emerges from a discord to complain about not being paid. Chris Jasons is known for churning out SOLID 7/10s. This one has an app.

This is an alphabetical list of writing on tabletop games, video games, games broadly, and a few adjacent topics. It is required reading. I am not agreeing with anything by having it on this list. Some of the works feature bibliographies and links to other works which they are referencing or in conversation with. Read those if you can. There are works I wanted to include on here but have been taken off of the internet, and I was unable to find them elsewhere beyond my hard drive.

You should read the following (just one a day or one per week, and maybe write a little personal response to it):

About Games and Beings Serious & Why Do Things Have Outlines, Bateson - https://garadinervi-repertori.blog/post/639473512034222080/gregory-bateson-1972-metalogue-about-games, https://garadinervi-repertori.blog/post/166320033101/gregory-bateson-why-do-things-have-outline

Against Procedurality, Sicart - https://gamestudies.org/1103/articles/sicart_ap

Anti-Canon Worlds and the UVG, Rejec - https://www.wizardthieffighter.com/2019/anti-canon-worlds-and-the-uvg/

Avoiding Inapt Discussions in RPGS, Prescott - https://blog.trilemma.com/2023/07/avoiding-inapt-discussion-in-rpgs.html

Bleed: The Spillover Between Player and Character, Bowman - https://www.nordiclarp.org/2015/03/02/bleed-the-spillover-between-player-and-character/

Blorb Principles, snan - https://idiomdrottning.org/blorb-principles

Boot Hill and the Fear of Dice, Rutskarn- https://www.chocolatehammer.org/?p=5773

Don’t Incentivize Ethical Behavior, Siew - https://slowlorispress.com/post/742713305722961920/dont-incentivise-ethical-behaviour

Game Design is Mind Control, Crane & Sorenson - https://genesisoflegend.podbean.com/e/episode-21-%e2%80%93-game-design-is-mind-control/

Homo Ludens, Huzinga - https://merton.bellarmine.edu/files/original/b0899cfad820ab8ad7033952b7a022ba1d7cab9d.pdf

Inevitable Architecture, Woods - https://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/inevitable-architecture/

Libre Baskerville Jam - https://itch.io/jam/libre-baskerville-jam

Morality Play, Pokey - https://myfriendpokey.tumblr.com/post/183941596800/morality-play

Moralizing and Manipulating in TTRPGs, IdleCartulary - https://idlecartulary.com/2023/09/02/moralising-and-manipulation-in-tabletop-roleplaying-games/

New Simulationism, Sorenson - https://samsorensen.blot.im/new-simulationism

On Romantic Fantasy and the OSR, Manola - https://udan-adan.blogspot.com/2015/07/on-romantic-fantasy-and-osr-d.html

Playing to Win, Maz - https://www.alicemaz.com/writing/minecraft.html

Revisiting GNS, Baker - https://lumpley.games/2025/04/07/revisiting-gns/

Rules Elide and its Consequences, Sinclair - https://web.archive.org/web/20230401204032/https://cohost.org/jared-sinclair/post/1211889-rules-elide-and-it

Sinistar or: How to Play Games Wrong, Joel - https://youtu.be/OFbhDs_8k1A?si=DGo4y1U3xr_8Qq0z

System Does Matter, Edwards - http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/system_does_matter.html

Systems of Relation, Dragon - https://possumcreek.medium.com/systems-of-relation-c3b27fc4cc99

Ten Manifestos, Harmony Zone - http://harmonyzone.org/ManifestoJam/TenManifestosForGroupsOfNoPeople.html

The Artist is Absent: Davey Wreden and the Beginner’s Guide, Danskin - https://youtu.be/4N6y6LEwsKc?si=DMFViwSTOOa4W6PY

The Big Three, Sorenson - https://memento-mori.livejournal.com/175828.html

The Forms and Fluidity of Game Play, Nguyen - https://gamephilosophy.org/pcg2014/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/C.-Thi-Nguyen-2014.-The-Forms-and-Fluidity-of-Game-Play-PCG2014.pdf

The Hidden Art: Slouching Towards A Critical Framework for RPGs, Laws - https://web.archive.org/web/20080625014524/https://www.rpg.net/oracle/essays/hiddenart.html

The Impermanence of Art, Bissette - https://web.archive.org/web/20241114224733/https://cohost.org/chrisb/post/2011604-the-impermanence-of

The Monomyth Thread, Libre, Kazumi & Udernation - https://bigstuffedcat.itch.io/the-monomyth-thread

Thinking About Formal Incentive, Marcia B - https://traversefantasy.blogspot.com/2023/09/thinking-about-formal-incentive.html?m=1

What are assumptions about how to play an OSR adventure that you think might not be commonly held as desired?, Scrap Princess - https://campaignwiki.org/wiki/LinksToWisdom/What_are_assumptions_about_how_to_play_an_OSR_adventure_that_you_think_might_not_be_commonly_held_as_desired%3f

What is a Game?, Suits - https://web.archive.org/web/20061010064123/http://www.stsintl.com/articles/whatisagame.html

What Should We Do With Our Games?, LeMieux & Boluk - https://alt254.itch.io/what-should-we-do-with-our-games

I put this list together in response to seeing a lot of the same arguments and discussions happening in regard to system-matters discourse, and it’s thinly veiled offshoots. The original goal was to ask people to understand both sides of the discussion and the reasons for pushback against both sides. After compiling, it now comprises more than just history and the goal is simply education and the sharing of ideas.

Hope you get something from it,

Bump in the Dark is a Forged-in-the-Dark / Redacted Files game about monster hunters in a small town forgotten by the powers that be, attempting to keep their community safe while uncovering something... darker.

It's also the latest project for my spreadsheet collection!

One of my most in-depth character kits to date, this play-kit has safety tools, a run-down of character creation (with hyperlinks for navigation!) a sheet for each character, a Hunt page, a Pact page, a Keeper page, and a Faction page!

You can check the sheets out for yourself here, or take a look at my full library by clicking on the link below.

Hello friend! Not sure exactly what you meant by rules-based, but hopefully there's enough of a variety in the stuff I talk about below that something hits what you're looking for.

Greeve Simulations, by Anrole.

GREEVE: Simulations is a one-shot Forged in the Dark game where players take on the roles of mecha academy cadets in combat simulations.

Play a single round for a quick challenge, or link multiple mock missions together to see how your squad evolves—or falls apart—under pressure.

I personally love Forged in the Dark games because of the layers of complexity you can have, depending on the table. The core mechanic is fairly simple: you roll a pool of dice and look for the highest number, and most of the time your roll result will be a mixed bag of outcomes, leading to a natural build-up and release of narrative tension. Players have a lot of resources for how to distribute consequences, whether that be accrueing stress to avoid something you don't want, or leaning on your relationship with other characters to share the load. There's also a lot of tools for the GM to work with: clocks to track so consequences can build up and then land like a pile of bricks, and in this case, there's also something called Scale, which reflects the power differences between characters and their opponents.

Greeve Simulations is a fairly basic introduction to the Forged in the Dark system, but that's good for a group that just wants to engage in a one-and-done kind of game. If your group picks this up and decides they really like the way a session plays, you can play through this game a couple of times and then carry what you've learned to other Forged in the Dark games for higher drama and more consequences to balance.

Boy Problems, by Colin Cummings.

It is many years into the future. A wealthy and powerful person (or persons) has claimed a rare and much sought-after prize: the “vault” of 200 unreleased (this is real!) songs from renowned Canadian pop artist, Carly Rae Jepsen.

Hired by an anonymous sponsor, your team of highly trained individuals will raid a well-defended location to retrieve said item. From planning to set-up to execution, you will see this heist through to its completion, whether that be a success or failure. There will many twists and turns along the way, and don’t always trust the specialists by your side.

This one-shot was a hot piece of media a few years ago. It pulls from a simple but satisfying system called **Lasers & Feelings", which gives you a few simple descriptions to determine what sets you apart from your fellow criminals, and a single number that defines your abilities in two different arenas. The game is designed for a ton of drama, double-crossing, and a discography to fuel your imagination.

If you like this game and you want to re-visit it, the creator has two expansions: Boy Problems Side-B, which is full of new jobs and extra rules, and Nocturne of Artifice, which gives you an additional cyber-gothic heist.

Edge Zero Force, by Mundos Infinitos.

It’s the near future. Only your Special Forces group is capable of resolving its conflicts.

Benjamín Aníbal Reyna, also known as Mundos Infinitos, makes a lot of pamphlet-sized games: great for short sessions that don't require you bring a lot to the table. Edge Zero Force is one of a trilogy of games, the other two being a mech-inspired Armored Battle Frame, and a digital-reality neo-noir Butterfly's Waking.

While these games are compact, they hold a lot. There are mission generation tables, a section for character creation, and rules for tracking resources, using a character tool called Edge, and tracks for your character's Conviction and Guilt - basically an emotional see-saw that either pushes you to character advancement, or takes your Agent out of play.

If you like the rules but you want a different setting, the other options in Reyna's sci-fi trilogy might hit just the right sweet spot.

Aberrant, by Wendigo Workshop.

"You are a monster. An experiment. Your body is small… weak… useless… but not for long. You feel it. The potential… The power.

Animals and monsters were not entertaining anymore, people wanted more teeth. You are the result of these researches."

Aberrant is an exploration/dungeon crawler where you play as an experiment trying to escape the derelict facility within which it was made. Fight the other denizens of The Lab, eat them to grow stronger, and reach the exit to gain your freedom.

I don't think that Aberrant is necessarily strictly one-shot material, especially since mutations and evolution are meant to grow your character's power the longer you play. However, the system it works on, Breathless, creates a tight game loop in which your characters need to take rest actions to replenish their abilities, but each rest action allows for the dangers of the dungeon to catch up. These tight game loops mean that you will likely get through a lot in a single session. Since the game is currently in-development, much of what is out will be enough for a single session, with the pieces that make it re-playable coming out in the future.

Deat Dies Tonight, by NatJones1809.

You lived normal lives, until fear crept in at the edges. You were stalked and tracked and hunted by nightmare manifestations of your worst fears, right up until they coalesced in your homes and ATE YOU.

But death didn't come. Now you're half-monster, souls fused to the fear-demon digesting you, wrestling your nightmare instincts down so you can kill the fear of death and rip your demons apart in the single deathless instant that follows.

DEATH DIES TONIGHT is a one-shot action movie TTRPG for 3-6 players and a GM. Play as once-regular people possessed by archetypal nightmares, use your newfound fear-powers to struggle for your life and kill the Death-Nightmare to free yourself from your terrible fate.

Horror is a great genre for one-shots, because there's a natural end-point at the end of these kinds of movies. Either the horror wins, or you manage to make it out. Like most good one-shots, character creation for this game is fairly quick: you can roll on a couple of tables to figure out who you are. I also appreciate the GM tools available here: you construct details about Death to determine why and how they're a threat, and the PDF comes with small character boxes that you can print and hand out to your players, as well as keep a succinct summary for yourself.

I also like the fact that this game has an outcome where you succeed too well: rolling too high causes your character to become more monstrous, causing harm and fear to the people around them. It works for a horror game!

OMEN, by Gila RPGS.

OMEN is a TTRPG all about defying fate. Designed as a one shot, you and your friends will come together, create a doomed world, and do what you can to save it.

Defy or doom, either way it's a good time.

Designed to be a one-shot, OMEN is a world on a clock: either the world will end, or your Fated characters will manage to defy what feels inevitable. You track both of these possibilities with clocks, which tick towards an epilogue. To try and stop everything from collapsing, the players will have to take on various challenges, using a limited resource from a dice pool.

I think there's definitely some strategy to this game, since you'll have to choose when you want to fail and when you need to succeed. The game is also fairly genre-agnostic: it doesn't matter if the world that's ending is a fantasy or a science-fiction story. Spencer Campbell, the creator behind GILA RPGs, is known for creating tight rules systems that are easy to learn, but can take some time to master: so that makes me think that OMEN might give you a good challenge!

Bugs Against Blight, by Brett Svendsen.

"The Oldgrass is dead, consumed by BLIGHT. The many displaced bugs have followed the RADIANT QUEEN, leader of the Oldgrass bees, to a new home dubbed BUGBERG.

Blight is a wicked substance — rotting the green, mucking clean water, and turning once kind bugs into irrecognizable murdering monsters.

While little time has passed, Bugberg has become a bustling metropolis. Though little is shared in common amongst these many bugs, they are all bound by common plight.

The Blight comes. Will you let your new homeland fall to the fate of the old? Will you leave your fellow bugs to be consumed by Blight? NO! You are a BUG OF BUGBERG!"

Fans of Hollow Knight will probably really enjoy this Mausritter hack. Your bugs are small and fragile, who get better just by staying alive. This is a great game for folks who like grid-based combat and roll-under mechanics: typically you'll roll a d20 and hope you get a number lower than the attribute you're using.

You'll have to do a little extra work in order to get this to the table, unfortunately: I think you need the original Mausritter rules to play, as the document for Bugs Against Blight is just what you need to make it a conversion about bugs. This style of game also works best with a pre-written dungeon: so if you want a crisp one-shot, might I recommend Sanctum of the Ori Magi, by brstf?

You Can Also Check Out…

My One Shot Tag, where I've cultivated more recommendation posts than I realized!

Tanya Floaker's Games Catalogue has a lot of single-session games that let you wrestle with complex topics.

The Great Soul Train Robbery, by Cloven Pine Games.

Crustacean Bus Station, by Kumada1.

Escape from Dino Island, by Sam Tung & Sam Roberts.

Light Eaters: Thunderfuck, by blindink.

The Triangle Agency Fanzine is out!! Cover art by the lovely @kodasea

Thanks to all the contributors and Triangle Agency community! Love this game, love you all!!

A space station map I made for a Mothership TTRPG pamphlet I am writing!