Personable Thoughts

  Christmas has come, and is well on its way to going, as I write this. It's nice spending time with family and eating yourself fat etc, but that's not the topic of this blog. As part of our Christmas celebrations, I received several nice RPG books as gifts, which got me thinking of The Book as An Object. There has been a lot of discussion about what "the game is", is it what's written in the book, does it only exist at the table (whether wooden or virtual), or is it some abstract space defined by the written rules? An interesting, if academic, question, but not one I will attempt to answer here, except to say that the RPG book serves multiple purposes. There is a discussion about information design that often rears its head: Is it better to design the book for someone sitting down and reading it, or for someone referencing it at the table during play? And is it possible to design for both simultaneously? Many games try to solve this with play aids at the table in...

  A common type of resolution mechanic in tabletop role playing games is the skill check - often resolved with comparing the value of a dice role plus a skill bonus to a target number ( E.g. difficulty class/DC, actual terminology may differ). The value of the DC tells you the difficulty of the task ahead, and the larger the character's skill bonus, the higher the chance of rolling over the DC and succeeding at the task. This framing essentially positions the roll as determining how well the character does at the task, which can feel unsatisfying when a character who should be skilled at the task fails something relatively simple (you could of course argue that relatively simple tasks should not warrant a roll, but you have to draw a line somewhere if you want to have skill checks in your game, and I like skills). One option is of course to forego the dice roll completely - select a difficulty class and compare it to a "skill level", if the skill is higher, it's a suc...

  This December, I am participating in the Covert Critic blogging extravaganza, as celebrated by the bloggers nesting in the Prismatic Wasteland Discord server, inspired by Clayton Notestine's 2024 Gifts for RPG Designers . This is a very fun exercise, and has me reading things I otherwise might not have picked up. Today: Swineheart Motel by Ty Pitre, AKA Mindstorm Press . Swineheart Motel is a system-neutral horror adventure for modern settings, set in and around a roadside motel deep in the forests of northern America. A podcaster has gone missing (the horror!) and the players are tasked with finding him. This is all contained in a 40 page zine, to the best of my knowledge only available digitally. Art is sparse, but what's there is bespoke and good. Instead of more spot art, many pages have little hand-written quotes, possibly attributed to the missing podcaster, though this is unclear. What is beyond doubt, however, is that they work well for setting the scene with their ...

  It is said that no plan survives contact with reality, and I find that the same is often true of RPG rulesets. Of course, one can make a concerted effort to follow the rules as written, but in many cases, you will end up with your own table's version of the game, having discarded some bits of rules that did not click with you, and added some house rules of your own. I have been running Songbirds 3e by snow roughly weekly for most of the year, and in this post, I will try to sum up my experiences with playing it, rather than just what's in the book. Songbirds is, in its bones, a very simple system, relying to a large extent on vibes as its selling point. Fortunately, the vibes are impeccable, and absolutely managed to sell me on the game. At its core are four attributes, each with its associated skills tracked with 5e style proficiency. Checks are standard d20+modifier vs DC rolls, though unlike 5e attributes only have a single value acting as their modifier. Combat is done ...