We’re sitting in a hotel in the mountains, after a hike/run, after sauna, waiting for dinner, the birds singing, the river purling in the distance.
On Mastodon, @funkaoshi pointed me to two blog posts:
I contend that a lack of desire to invent a magic system on the spot as you play is not a symptom of an impoverished imagination. Rather, it is an entirely reasonable demand by those who would rather play a game than design it. – F**k-You Design, To Distant Lands
So how does one decide what aspects of a game deserve elaboration and which can be left for the imagination of the players? … There is an essentially relativist objection to general standards for what deserves elaboration. – Towards Objective Prosthetics, Necropraxis
F**k-You Design, To Distant Lands
Towards Objective Prosthetics, Necropraxis
It’s an interesting question. How much of these gaps should the rules fill? How much does the table enjoy filling in the gaps?
@reed said on Mastodon:
If you want a system that can’t reasonably be modelled with a small rule-set, you’re probably better off with a FKR-style approach. … I think the tradeoff is worth it, but I’m also the sort of person who enjoys making rulings and thinking about game design. Is is possible that the OSR is largely “by amateur game-designers, for amateur game-designers” and if so is that “wrong”?
I hesitate to call *anybody* in RPG a professional, to be honest. 😅 All amateurs to different degrees, I feel. The advent of DIY publishing certainly enabled anything from D&D retro clones to indie games from the Forge days and everything else that’s been new since the PDF market was established. I suspect the unfortunate wording of the blog post is a result of failed expectation management and so that is my personal takeaway: I need to be clear about my intent. Then I can answer: the game is not for you.
My Fantasy Traveller game has a bunch of magic skills and close to no explanation – and in a blog post introducing the game I say that playing a magic user absolutely involves negotiating with the referee. That’s how I like it. This is definitely something to be open about. That is to say, there is no clear answer to the points made about about rules with gaps that you have to fill at the table, I think. It’s a valid concern, but also a valid design lacunae – it depends on your taste.
The following is the paragraph from my design blog post about the magic system that is supposed to do announce this gap. It should probably be part of the game PDF itself, and if you don’t read German you’ll have to translate it yourself. Not good, I know. But then again, it’s free and I don’t feel obliged to make it better for strangers unless they like it and we’re involved in an entertaining and interesting conversation.
Das Magiesystem ist weit offen und bietet nichts ausser ein paar Stichworten. Den Rest muss man am Tisch aushandeln und festschreiben. Beispielsweise könnte man sich vorstellen, dass man mit Feuer-3 einen Feuerball wie im D&D zaubern kann. Das steht so aber nirgends. Vielleicht kann man das ja auch schon mit Feuer-1. Das Magiesystem selber ausbauen und aushandeln muss man ebenfalls mögen. – Ein kleine Vorstellung von Helmbarten
Ein kleine Vorstellung von Helmbarten
In English:
The magic system is wide open and doesn’t offer more than a few keywords. The rest has to be negotiated at the table and somebody needs to write it down. We might imagine that Fire-3 allows wizards to cast fireballs like in D&D, for example, but it doesn’t say so. Perhaps you can do that with Fire-1. You have to like constructing and negotiating that magic system.
I guess that if you read the passage and you don’t like it, you’ll either not play a magic user if you’re a player, or you’ll run a different game if you’re a referee. Either way, being upfront about it is how I might want to try and do some expectation management.
If somebody still calls it “Fuck You Design”, then I don’t know whether we can have a constructive discussion if that’s your opening move. I don’t appreciate the language.
As Yochai Gal writes in a comment:
You can write all you like about how rules lite games are missing important chunks (and I agree, Cairn is that!) but the framing and title here is not only offensive to a minor degree but implies an intent that could not be further from the truth!
#RPG
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
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The conversation made me write the translation of Ein kleine Vorstellung von Helmbarten: A short introduction to Halberts.
Ein kleine Vorstellung von Helmbarten
A short introduction to Halberts
– Alex 2022-05-31 21:00 UTC