Unnatural Twenty

GNS and the Big Model TTRPGs consist of three pillars, Gamism (use mechanics to have an enjoyable game), Narrativism (tell an interesting story), and Simulationism (create a credible story). Players can enjoy each to lesser or greater degrees, and some games are better at some than others, or are generally recognized as such. I recently realized that I like the Gamist part of games to be light enough that I can get down to playing pretty quickly, the Narrativist part is something I try to contribute to, and Simulationism means adhering to genre conventions, not trying to overturn them. GNS Theory at the RPG Museum Challenge versus Genre The most important thing in some games is to maintain the expectations of the genre, so that the story that is created seems appropriate. In other games, the genre informs some things, but the most important thing is to have fun in whatever way drives the characters to achieve their own goals. I don't think I really care about challenge ...

Which RPG have you played the most since August 2016? I haven't played much in the last year. I played two online sessions of Microscope and one face to face. I ran two sessions of the Sprawl, and about six of the Black Hack, both of which followed on from games of Microscope. I played Call of Cthulhu and D&D5 at a convention last December, and last week I played the first session of a new campaign of Spellbound Kingdoms. So I guess the Black Hack is my most played game in the last year.

I found myself wondering about a game like Pathfinder, that by now has a very long list of playable classes and races, and something like the Black Hack, which has no rules for races at all and only four classes. At first glance it looks like Pathfinder gives you more options for classes, since it has rules for hundreds. But in the case of races, the Black Hack actually gives players more options. Since there are no rules for races, the number of racial options is truly infinite. In Pathfinder there is a need to have rules for your race, so you tend to only choose from the options that are already there. Does having only four classes make the Black Hack limited? Again, you can use the warrior class in many many ways, it's possible to use it to describe many different types of martial characters. What I think I'm realizing is that, going into a new campaign, I don't want there to be a book that lists all the options for race, class, homeland, skills, and so on. I want ...

Gameplay tends to be about what you do in a computer game at any given moment. A game might involve stealth, shooting, driving, jumping, crafting, trading, or social gameplay elements. A game that is all about driving might have competition, maintenance, upgrading, repair, and design gameplay elements. A strategy game might have base building and resource management as gameplay elements while another might not, but have research and development among its gameplay elements. So what kind of gameplay elements do TTRPGs have? What kind of things do you find yourself doing for periods of time within a session? There’s combat, fighting, violent conflict, different to this is warfare, when characters are involved in large scale combat, there’s stealth and evasion, also there’s conversation, negotiation, deception, persuasion, seduction, there’s management and planning, and you could have research, learning, investigation, exploration and discovery, as well as choice and argument. Gam...

I think gameplay is a term that gets used in computer games all the time, but I’ve never noticed it used in reference to tabletop RPGs. Maybe there are bigger marketing budgets and more review sites for computer games, and the use of language to describe different types of gameplay have arisen to discuss those games. The language used to describe TTRPGs seems to discuss them at the rulebook level, at the campaign level, or at the session level. The equivalents for computer games would be the product level (e.g. Tomb Raider), the game level (e.g. my first play-through of Tomb Raider) or the session level (the time I spent playing Tomb Raider today). If I watch a promotional video for a new computer game, I’ll generally see all the major gameplay elements of that game in action, so I’ll know if the ones I like are present. I think publishers of TTRPGs don’t describe their games in the same way, they try to appeal to customers by talking about their mechanics, or the setting they use...