The Role of Setting

A lot of discourse I’ve seen recently, at least in certain spaces within the broader RPG scene, is about the role of setting versus the role of rules in your gamer. Both elements, in my mind at least, overlap in at least one crucial place on the Venn diagram: they supply vibes.

I am, as those who love and cherish me know, way too invested in creating the mwah Chef’s Kiss “perfect” ruleset for whatever game I’m braining about lately. And I am that way (mind goblins aside) largely because I definitely think rules inform your gaming experience. I’ve never been able to “get the system out of the way” in either the GM's seat or in a player role: it’s always been a pretty big impact on what I’m doing, and what I feel like I’m getting done.

However…this sometimes leads me to neglect setting.

Now this un-fatherly neglect DOESN’T typically happen for games I’m actually running. However, for the million games I think about but don’t end up running, they often end up looking like rulebooks with very little else attached.

And, perhaps most importantly, these rulebook-games never hit the table. So what gives?

I think these little projects of mine fail to launch not because the rules aren’t cool, or workable, or useful, but because while the rules of an RPG scaffold the experience of play, they don’t meaningfully fill that scaffolding.

Or put another way, instructions on how to mechanically represent a cool world/character/story do not a cool world/character/story make.

When we sit down to play a roleplaying game, there are about ten thousand elements that go into a fun, memorable experience and the rules are one of them. Can a sh*tty rule system break an otherwise decent game? Absolutely! We’ve all been in the room for that, right? But the more I play, design, and GM, the more I feel that while rules can break a game, they can’t make one.

This goes back to my bad scaffolding analogy. If the rules are providing structure, the setting (and all that’s inherent with it: characters, locations, quests, cool items and toys, potions, dungeons, dragons…) and the actions of the characters fill that structure with meaning and fun.

When I play an RPG, and I think “what do I do? what should my character do right now?” I am often informed by the story that has led to this moment (and the setting is certainly entwined with that story), rather than what I can mechanically do.

All of this rambling to say, GMs and designers alike, don’t neglect the story, the setting, the premise, the world, etc, because that is the content that fills the superstructure your rules provide!

Maybe no one else but me needs to hear that, who knows. Hope this has provided some food for thought!

Until next week (sorry we missed last week, the kludgekauldron boileth over lately).

Oh, but as always, it’s tax season…

Joesky Tax

The Saboteur Bear, or Hakthar

For Into the Odd/Crawl

Looks like a bear with rust-red, scaly hide and a bat-like face. Horridly, it has opposable thumbs. It hails from Rudar (that red planet in the sky). Known for making itself an extreme nuisance to anyone traveling through its territory by fouling rations, cutting ropes, stealing important quest items, and the like. Able to communicate in awful, child-like voices, mostly used to scare the shit out of anyone straying from the group after dark. Were probably originally manufactured by sorcerers on Rudar who wanted to discourage adventurers from crossing their dark demesnes…

HP 12, BOD 16, WIL 8, Bite d8, Claw d6

• Horrific stun-shriek that befuddles anyone nearby

• Territorial, but not bred killers - most of all, they want to drive you out

• Their skulls are engraved with sorcerous sigils - worth their weight in gold to the right collector

Adventure Seed: This hakthar was driven out of its old territory by (1-2: fire, 3-4: flood, 5-6: adventurers) and has set up camp in a peaceful farming valley, triggering a panic and an only semi-related witch hunt in nearby villages.

Missives from the Void

Let’s check in with the blog-o-sphere again this week, keeping in mind as always that the blog posts I’m highlighting are simply posts that tickled me this week. They’re usually not even FROM this week…

The Tauroctony Club, from the Nothic’s Eye.

Conlang Scratchpad Spectacular, from Throne of Salt.

Marineris Honeymoon: Mechs, from CarrionGods.