One of my favorite sections of the Feng Shui 2 rulebook can be found on pg. 223-224. In a section entitled “Running Fights,” Robin D. Laws succinctly walks you through the exact procedures he follows at the table during a Feng Shui fight.

I don’t mean the rules. Those are located elsewhere. This is much more practical than that. For example:

Note the highest shot of any of your GMCs. Ask the players if any of them have a result higher than the highest shot you have marked on your shot counter. If so, that becomes your highest shot. If not, your GMC’s first shot is the first shot of the sequence.

Go to your laptop, and the browser tab in which you’ve opened your counter app. I use a Chrome browser app called, shockingly enough, Counter. Set the counter number to the first shot of the sequence, which you’ve just determined.

(…)

After a player acts, she moves her single token on her personal shot counter a number of spaces equal to the shot cost of the action — usually 3.

If multiple GMCs act on the same shot, they act in the order you’ve noted them on your scratch pad, from top to bottom.

This sort of “best practices” stuff is really useful. So much GMing advice in this hobby is wrapped up in big, abstract concepts: We need more of this nuts-and-bolts stuff.

Let’s call them table procedures. What are you actually doing at the table? How can that be improved? How does that make the game better for you and your players? The very first GM Tip post here on the Alexandrian was mostly about this sort of thing.

USING THE SHOT COUNTER

On that topic, I’ve spent the last few months experimenting with Feng Shui 2 in an effort to figure out the best table procedures for running the game. This effort has been driven in part by a desire to figure out what tools Atlas Games can provide to our Special Ops GMs so that they can run the best convention and demo games possible.

Here’s what you’ll need:

A shot counter. One is provided on p. 348 of the rulebook. If want it to last awhile, I recommend printing it out on matte photo paper and/or laminating it. I generally keep this counter directly in front of me.

A pair of colored pawns for each PC. These are very affordable. Here’s a very cheap set on Amazon. Each PC should have their own color and each of them should have two pawns in that color. Wooden meeples are another relatively cheap option.

When a PC rolls initiative, they should place one of their colored pawns on the shot counter at their initiative result. The matching colored pawn stays on the table in front of them. This very quickly allows everyone at the table to identify that, for example, Suzie is the red pawn. (You can get a similar result by using custom miniatures for each PC or  simply using the same colors consistently over a long period of time until everyone has learned who goes to which color. But the dual-pawn system basically simulates that mastery instantaneously.

Multiple pairs of flat, colored discs for the GMCs. Similar to those used in bingo games. This unfortunately means you need to buy much larger sets than you need (since you only need two chits in each color), but even with large numbers of extraneous chits, the sets are cheap on Amazon.

For each fight, the GM should print out the GMC stat blocks on a single sheet of paper. Place that sheet on the table separately from your other notes for easy reference. For each GMC, place a colored chit on the shot counter and a matching chit right on top of or next to the stat block. In this way, you don’t have to keep any written notes on initiative check results.

(I experimented with numbered chits instead, but players found them difficult to read from across the table. Using chits instead of pawns for the GMCs not only opens up primary colors that would otherwise be claimed by the PCs, but also makes it incredibly easy to tell when the next PC is going with a simple glance at the shot counter.)

Once the fight begins, the GM simply moves the counters and chits down the track an appropriate number of spaces based on the shot cost of the action they’re taking.

For PC actions, I will generally do this as the action is being declared (so it’s usually happening simultaneously with the player rolling their dice). For GMCs, I will generally do it immediately after their action has been resolved. The goal is to multitask the time spent moving chits on the shot counter so that the action flows smoothly through it.

Another advantage of this approach is that it combines well with the technique described in Feng Shui: Filling the Shot: Because you can quickly identify which characters are acting in each shot with a single glance, it becomes much easier to group those actions together and frame them into the shot.

SESSION 20D: THE TALK OF THE TOWN

April 27th, 2008
The 8th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

GATHERING AT THE GHOSTLY MINSTREL

When they had gotten some distance away from the cathedral, Tee asked Dominic whether he thought they ought to tell Mand Scheben about what was happening. “Even if he can’t advise us, I think he should at least hear it from us.”

Dominic agreed and they headed over to the Temple of Asche. Unfortunately, Mand Scheben wasn’t there. They made plans to come back the next day. They also tried to meet with Lord Zavere, but he was also out (Kadmus told them that he had gone out with Lord Abbercombe and was not expected back until the next morning).

Stymied (at least for the moment), they returned to the Ghostly Minstrel in time to meet the rest of the group for dinner.

Tee and Dominic gave a brief, but complete, overview of what had happened with the Silver Fatar. Dominic also told them that he had decided to simply not show up at the Temple of the Clockwork God the next day. He still wasn’t sure what Maeda wanted, but he didn’t feel safe about it.

With that decision made, Elestra began telling them everything she had learned that day about Pythoness House; the second Flayed Man killing; and – most exciting of all – the fact that their names were being mentioned all over town as a result of Shilukar’s capture!

“It’s being talked about all over town?” Tee said.

“Yes!” Elestra said.

Tee’s face went white. She pushed her chair back and stood up quickly. “Excuse me. I have to go.”

She ran out of the Ghostly Minstrel, leaving the others to look after her and exchange puzzled frowns. (more…)

“Most of the campaigns I’ve really enjoyed have been in systems I didn’t like.”

“A great GM can take any RPG and run a good game.”

“I just want a system that gets out of the way when I’m playing.”

What I think these players are discovering is that most RPG systems don’t actually carry a lot of weight, and are largely indistinguishable from each other in terms of the type of weight they carry.

In theory, as we’ve discussed, there’s really nothing an RPG system can do for you that you can’t do without it. There’s no reason that we can’t all sit around a table, talk about what our characters do, and, without any mechanics at all, produce the sort of improvised radio drama which any RPG basically boils down to.

The function of any RPG, therefore, is to provide mechanical structures that will support and enhance specific types of play. (Support takes the form of neutral resolution, efficiency, replicability, consistency, etc.) If you look at the earliest RPGs this can be really clear, because those games were more modular. Since the early ’80s, however, RPGs pretty much all feature some form of universal resolution mechanic, which gives the illusion that all activities are mechanically supported. But in reality, that “support” only provides the most basic function of neutral resolution, while leaving all the meaningful heavy lifting to the GM and the players.

To understand what I mean by that, consider a game which says: “Here are a half dozen fighting-related skills (Melee Weapons, Brawling, Shooting, Dodging, Parrying, Armor Use) and here are some rules for making skill checks.”

If you got into a fight in that game, how would you resolve it?

We’ve all been conditioned to expect a combat system in our RPGs. But what if your RPG didn’t have a combat system? It would be up to the GM and the players to figure out how to use those skills to resolve the fight. They’d be left with the heavy lifting.

And when it comes to the vast majority of RPGs, that’s largely what you have: Skill resolution and a combat system. (Science fiction games tend to pick up a couple of additional systems for hacking, starship combat, and the like. Horror games often have some form of Sanity/Terror mechanic derived from Call of Cthulhu.)

So when it comes to anything other than combat — heists, mercantile trading, exploration, investigation, con artistry, etc. — most RPGs leave you to do the heavy lifting again: Here are some skills. Figure it out.

Furthermore, from a utilitarian point of view, these resolution+combat systems are all largely interchangeable in terms of the gameplay they’re supporting. They’re all carrying the same weight, and they’re leaving the same things (everything else) on your shoulders. Which is not to say that there aren’t meaningful differences, it’s just that they’re the equivalent of changing the decor in your house, not rearranging the floorplan: What dice do you like using? What skill list do you prefer for a particular type of game? How much detail do you like in your skill resolution and/or combat? And so forth.

SYSTEM MATTERS

What I’m saying is that system matters. But when it comes to mainstream RPGs, this truth is obfuscated because their systems all matter in exactly the same way. And this is problematic because it has created a blindspot; and that blindspot is resulting in bad game design. It’s making RPGs less accessible to new players and more difficult for existing players.

I’ve asked you to ponder the hypothetical scenario of taking your favorite RPG and removing the combat system from it. Now let’s consider the example of a structure which actually HAS been ripped out of game… although you may not have noticed that it happened.

From page 8 to page 12 of The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, Arneson & Gygax spelled out a very specific procedure for running dungeons in the original edition of Dungeons & Dragons. It boils down to:

1. You can move a distance based on your speed and encumbrance per turn.

2. Non-movement activities also take up a turn or some fraction of a turn. For example:

• ESPing takes 1/4 turn.
• Searching a 10′ section of wall takes 1 turn. (Secret passages found 2 in 6 by men, dwarves, or hobbits; 4 in 6 by elves.

3. 1 turn in 6 must be spent resting. If a flight/pursuit has taken place, you must rest for 2 turns.

4. Wandering Monsters: 1 in 6 chance each turn. (Tables provided.)

5. Monsters: When encountered, roll 2d6 to determine reaction (2-5 negative, 6-8 uncertain, 9-12 positive).

• Sighted: 2d4 x 10 feet.
• Surprise: 2 in 6 chance. 25% chance that character drops a held item. Sighted at 1d3 x 10 feet instead.
• Avoiding: If lead of 90 feet established, monster will stop pursuing. If PCs turn a corner, 2 in 6 chance they keep pursuing. If PCs go through secret door, 1 in 6 chance they keep pursuing. Burning oil deters many monsters from pursuing. Dropping edible items has a chance of distracting intelligent (10%), semi-intelligent (50%), or non-intelligent (90%) monsters so they stop pursuing. Dropping treasure also has a chance of distracting intelligent pursuers (90%), semi-intelligent (50%), or non-intelligent (10%) monsters.

6. Other activities:

• Doors must be forced open (2 in 6 chance; 1 in 6 for lighter characters). Up to three characters can force a door simultaneously, but forcing a door means you can’t immediately react to what’s on the other side. Doors automatically shut. You can wedge doors open with spikes, but there’s a 2 in 6 chance the wedge will slip while you’re gone.
• Traps are sprung 2 in 6.
• Listening at doors gives you a 1 in 6 (humans) or 2 in 6 (elves, dwarves, hobbits) of detecting sound. Undead do not make sound.

I’ve said this before, but if you’ve never actually run a classic megadungeon using this procedure — and I mean strictly observing this procedure — then I strongly encourage you to do so for a couple of sessions. I’m not saying you’ll necessarily love it (everyone has different tastes), but it’s a mind-opening experience that will teach you a lot about the importance of game structures and why system matters.

The other interesting thing here is that Arneson & Gygax pair this very specific procedure with very specific guidance on exactly what the DM is supposed to prep when creating a dungeon on pages 3 thru 8 of the same pamphlet. (These two things are conjoined: They can tell you exactly what to prep because they’re also telling you exactly how to use it.) Take these two things plus a combat system for dealing with hostile monster and, if you’re a first time GM, you can follow these instructions and run a successful game. It’s a simple, step-by-step guide.

“Now wait a minute,” you might be saying. “You said this procedure had been ripped out of D&D. What are you talking about? There’s still dungeon crawling in D&D!”

… but is there?

THE SLOW LOSS OF STRUCTURE

Many of the rules I describe above have passed down from one edition to the next and can still be found, in one form or another, in the game as it exists today. But if you actually sit down and look at the progression of Dungeon Master’s Guides, you’ll discover that starting with 2nd Edition the actual procedure began to wither away and eventually vanished entirely with 4th Edition.

The guidance on how to prep a dungeon has proven to have a little more endurance, but it, too, has atrophied. The 5th Edition core rulebooks, for just one example, don’t actually tell you how to key a dungeon map. (And although they have several example maps, none of them actually feature a key.)

One of the nifty things about a strong, robust scenario structure like dungeon crawling is that with a fairly mild amount of fiddling you can move it from one system to another. This is partly because most RPGs are built on the model of D&D, but it’s also because scenario structures in RPGs tend to be closely rooted to the fictional state of the game world.

This is, in fact, why you probably didn’t notice that 5th Edition D&D doesn’t actually have dungeon crawling in it any more: You’re familiar with the structure of dungeon crawling, and you unconsciously transferred it to the new edition the same way that you’ve most likely transferred it to other games lacking a dungeon crawling structure in the past. In fact, I’m willing to guess that removing dungeon crawling from 5th Edition was not, in fact, a conscious decision on the part of the designers: They learned how to run a dungeoncrawl decades ago and, like you, have been unconsciously transferring that structure from one game to another ever since.

Where this becomes a problem, however, are all the new players who don’t know how to run a dungeoncrawl.

Most people enter the hobby through D&D. And D&D used to reliably teach every new DM two very important procedures:

1. How to run a dungeon crawl

2. How to run combat

And using just those two procedures (easily genericizing the dungeon crawling procedure to handle any form of location-crawl), a GM can get a lot of mileage. In fact, I would argue that most of the RPG industry is built on just these two structures, and that most GMs really only know how to use these two structures plus railroading.

So what happens when D&D stops teaching new DMs how to run a dungeoncrawl?

It means that GMs are now reliant entirely on railroading and combat.

And that’s not good for the hobby.

THE BLINDSPOT

If you need another example of what this looks like in practice, check out The Lost Mine of Phandelver, the scenario that comes with the D&D 5th Edition Starter Set.  It’s a fascinating look at how this really is a blindspot for the 5th Edition designers, because The Lost Mine of Phandelver includes a lot of GM advice. They tell you that the GM needs to:

• Referee
• Narrate
• Play the monsters

They give lots of solid, basic advice like:

• When in doubt, make it up
• It’s not a competition
• It’s a shared story
• Be consistent
• Make sure everyone is involved
• Be fair
• Pay attention

There’s a detailed guide on how to make rulings. They tell you how to set up an adventure hook.

Then the adventure starts and they tell you:

• This is boxed text, you should read it.
• Here is a list of specific things you should do; including getting a marching order so that you know where they’re positioned when the goblins ambush them.
• When the goblins ambush them, they give the DM a step-by-step guide for how combat should start and what they should be doing while running the combat.
• They lay out several specific ways that the PCs can track the goblins back to their lair, and walk the DM through resolving each of them.

And then you get to the goblins’ lair and…  nothing.

I mean, they do an absolutely fantastic job presenting the dungeon:

• General Features
• What the Goblins Know (always love this)
• Keyed map
• And, of course, the key entries themselves describing each room

But the step-by-step instructions for how you’re actually supposed to use this material? It simply… stops. The designers clearly expect, almost certainly without actually consciously thinking about it, that how you run a dungeon is so obvious that even people who need to be explicitly told that they should read the boxed text out loud don’t need to be told how to run a dungeon.

And because they believe it’s obvious, they don’t include it in the game.  And because they don’t include it in the game, new DMs don’t learn it. And, as a result, it stops being obvious.

(To be perfectly clear here: I’m not saying that you need the exact structure for dungeon crawling found in OD&D. That would be silly. But the core, fundamental structure of a location-crawl is not only an essential component for D&D; it’s really fundamental to virtually ALL roleplaying games.)

THE BLINDSPOT PARADOX

Paradoxically, this blindspot not only strips structure from RPGs by removing those structures; it also strips structure from RPGs by blindly forcing structures.

It is very common for a table of RPG players to have a sort of preconceived concept of what functions an RPG is supposed to be fulfilling, and when they encounter a new system they frequently just default back to the sort of “meta-RPG” they never really stop playing. This is encouraged by the fact that the RPG hobby is permeated by the same meme that rules are disposable, with statements like:

• “You should just fudge the results!”
• “Ignore the rules if you need to!”

A widespread culture of kitbashing, of course, is not inherently problematic. It’s a rich and important tradition in the RPG hobby. But it does get a little weird when people start radically houseruling a system before they’ve even played it… often to make it look just like every other RPG they’ve played. (For example, I had a discussion with a guy who said he didn’t enjoy playing Numenera: Before play he’d decided he didn’t like the point spend mechanic for resolving skill checks; didn’t like XP spends for effect; and didn’t like GM intrusions so he didn’t use any of those mechanics. He also radically revamped how the central Effort mechanic works in the game. Nothing inherently wrong with doing any of that, but he never actually played Numenera.)

As a game designer, I actually find it incredibly difficult to get meaningful playtest feedback from RPG players because, by and large, none of them are actually playing the game.

And these memes get even weirder when you encounter them in game designers themselves: People who are ostensibly designing robust rules for other people to use, but in whom the response to “just fudge around it” has become so ingrained that they do it while playtesting their own games instead of recognizing mechanical failures and structural shortcomings and figuring out how to fix them.

EXCEPTIONS TO THE BLINDSPOT

To circle all the way back around here: System Matters. But due to the longstanding blindspot when it comes to game structures and scenario structures in RPGs, we’ve stunted the growth of RPGs. Most of our RPGs are basically the same game, and they shouldn’t be. The RPG medium should be as rich and varied in the games it supports as, for example, the board game industry is. Instead, we have the equivalent of an industry where every board game plays just like Settlers of Catan.

Now there are exceptions to this blindspot when it comes to scenario structures. Partly influenced by storytelling games (which often feature very rigid scenario structures), we’ve been seeing an increasing number of RPGs beginning to incorporate at least partial scenario structures.

Blades in the Dark, for example, has a crew system that supports developing a criminal gang over time. Ars Magica does something similar for a covenant of wizards. Reign provides a generic cap system for managing player-run organizations in competition with other organizations.

Technoir features a plot-mapping scenario structure that’s tied into character creation and noir-driven mechanics.

For Infinity I designed the Psywar system to provide support for complex social challenges (con artistry, social investigation, etc.).

You can also, of course, visit some of the game structures I’ve explored here on the Alexandrian: Party Planning, Tactical Hacking, Urbancrawls. The ongoing Scenario Structure Challenge series will continue to explore these ideas.

Go to Game Structures

We’re one month away from Dave Arneson Day, a celebration of the Father of Roleplaying Games on the day of his birth, October 1st.

Last year I talked about the Arnesonian Dungeon and I described how I wanted to celebrate Dave Arneson Day by Running Castle Blackmoor: Seeking to recapture that moment, almost 50 years ago, when Dave Arneson’s players went down into his basement, discovered the Castle Blackmoor miniature sitting on his table, and ventured down the stairs into the dungeons beneath it.

It’s a powerful, iconic image. But the truth is that it’s not quite that simple.

My first exposure to the dawn of the modern roleplaying game came through Greg Svenson’s “The First Dungeon Adventure,” which has been revised several times, but which you can read in its most current form here. Greg Svenson played in Arneson’s original Blackmoor campaign, and his story of having “the unique experience of being the sole survivor of the first dungeon adventure in the history of ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ indeed in the history of roleplaying in general” is really cool. It captures the imagination. It invites you to really envision what it would have been like to sit at that table with Dave Arneson and discover something truly new and unique and amazing. To be there when it all began.

But it’s probably not true.

For those unfamiliar with this topic, there are several key cruxes in the early history of Blackmoor:

When the first session was played: Several key pieces of documentary evidence are widely considered to point to 1971 as the date of the first Blackmoor session. (These are not actually conclusive, IMO. They’re just the earliest contemporary documentary evidence that can be reliably dated.) This date has gotten particular weight after publication of Jon Peterson’s Playing at the World, an incredibly authoritative treatment of the early history of RPGs, because Peterson virulently rejected all eyewitness accounts in favor of contemporary documentary evidence.

(Peterson has good reasons for this: When Gygax attempted to claim that AD&D was a game unrelated to D&D so that Dave Arneson didn’t need to be paid royalties any more, Dave Arneson sued him. As often happens, the ensuing legal battle separated everyone involved into two distinct camps and created disparate narratives about what “really” happened which became entrenched. Once that happened, virtually all eyewitness accounts were irreparably tainted. You get the same thing in another case with Gygax, who miraculously starts claiming that he never liked Tolkien that much and his work wasn’t a significant influence on D&D at exactly the same time that TSR got sued by the Tolkien estate.)

However, in their earliest accounts virtually all of the Blackmoor players cited 1970 as the date of inception. Although several people, including Arneson, later decided that their memories must be faulty after looking at the documentary evidence (further muddying the waters), the most significant testimony is that of David Fant: He was the original Baron of Blackmoor and infamously became the first vampire. As such, he definitively played in the earliest sessions of Blackmoor, and yet he stopped playing when he got a job at KSTP at the end of 1970 and definitely was not playing with Arneson in 1971. (The fact he can definitively date the event which caused him to stop playing with Arneson lends his account substantial credibility.)

What the first session actually consisted of: The three main variations of the tale are the dungeon crawl (“we came in, there was a model of Castle Blackmoor in the middle of the table, and we started exploring the castle’s dungeons instead of playing the Napoleonics game we were supposed to”), the troll under the bridge (related in a fanzine and also attested to by players as being the first use of Chainmail), and the “rescue Dave Arneson from a plane crash in Europe, go through a cave, and emerge into the world of Blackmoor” (in which everyone was playing themselves and only later transitioned to a form of the campaign where they were playing different characters).

Who actually played in that first session: Even once you get past the question of what was in the first session, there’s a significant disagreement over who was there.

What were the original rules: Did the original Blackmoor use the Chainmail rules for combat or not? This is incredibly complicated by the later TSR vs. Arneson lawsuits where the question of whether or not Arneson’s game was derivative of Chainmail was legally significant.

To give a small sampling:

David Fant says he was at the first session, it was the “castle in the middle of the table instead of Napoleonics and we went into the dungeon” variation, and Dave asked him if he wanted to be the Baron of the castle.

Bob Meyer says he was at the first session, it was the “troll under the bridge” scenario, and it definitely used the Chainmail rules because he died in one hit as a result, declared he thought the game was terrible, and refused to play again for several years.

Greg Svenson says he was at the first session (later revised to be the “first dungeon adventure”), it was the “castle in the middle of the table instead of Napoleonics and we went into the dungeon” variation, and it involved Baron Fant being an NPC (which clearly contradicts Fant’s account).

To be clear, I’m not saying any of these people are being deliberately deceptive. I’m saying these things happened a long time ago, and it’s also quite likely there were many people who played in what they thought was the “first session” of the game without being aware that Arneson had run stuff in the Black Moors before that, and there are also all the foibles of an inconsistently shared communal narrative PLUS the complications of the Arneson vs. Gygax feud and legal troubles.

If you’re interested in delving into this lore more deeply, check out the aforementioned Playing at the World by Jon Peterson. A documentary called Secrets of Blackmoor has also just recently been released. Although I found it to be a somewhat flawed work when I attended the world premiere, it nevertheless affords you the irreplaceable opportunity to hear these stories from the lips of the people who were actually there.

And start planning your celebration of Dave Arneson Day now!