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Fiction and Systems

I’ve been working on a space fantasy universe setting, fiction, and ttrpg rules system for a while now. As one piece is created, I look at the others to see how things need to adapt. This column is a collection of thoughts I’ve had while developing the setting, fiction, and rules.

Tone

While some games are written and geared to set a certain type of mood—be it gloomy or humorous—there many ttrpg settings are tone-neutral. These settings allow the narrative to shape how oppressive or hopeful a session or campaign might be. Champions: New Millennium and In Nomine‘s Gamemaster Guide discuss how to set the “dials” within their setting for a game. Champions uses a matrix of morality, realism, outlook, and seriousness while In Nomine suggests establishing a tone based on contrast, brightness, and humor. These books primarily put the duty of deciding the mood for a campaign as the GM’s prerogative, but there’s no reason the overall group can’t decide together. And, like a long-running TV show, tone is mutable. There might be a somber episode in a humorous game or a light-hearted breather in a more serious game.

Personally, I like it when settings have a more mutable tone. There are a few games out there where a player has a chance to play a celestial among humans, but most of them have an intrinsically bleak setting. While it would be possible to play a humorous game of Kult: Divinity Lost, the setting would still suggest the world is a dark one and the humor would likely echo that tone. Likewise, playing a campaign of Toon with a serious tone would not feel appropriate to the game. There’s nothing wrong with either of those games or with any setting that sets a tone, but it can lead to players not wanting to play a particular session or campaign due to conflicts with their own mood. When the GM and players have access to the “dials” of a game, a session can more easily shift to suit the needs of the table.

My own setting and fiction has a theme of overcoming obstacles and hopefulness. But there are monsters, fractious and fractionated governments, and dark history to allow for a much darker game. As I’ve been planning the rules, I’ve been working on the various “dials” to allow a group to use the setting in the style of a game they’d like to play without “breaking” the setting.

Fiction vs Rules

Whether playing an RPG about a story or series or watching/reading media based on an RPG, the things characters can do in the fiction often bend or break the rules of what they can do in an RPG. This isn’t exactly ludonarrative dissonance or gameplay and story segregation as the medium between the RPG and, say, a movie are very different. Often this is ignored as the needs of the story can be seen to outweigh the needs of the RPG, but it can have odd backlash once transporting the character to a more rigid ruleset, especially if the character breaks the balance of the rules. Or, when reading/watching it can lead to head scratching when a character or action doesn’t fit the settings/rules. This is illustrated in humorous effect within Knights of the Dinner Table, Issue 20’s “A Novel Idea” strip in which the group argues that a “zero level NPC” stable master could in no way knock the hero (who they deduce is a “8th to 10th level fighter”) unconscious with a single hit.

There are different rules in RPG that allow for more drama and pushing the boundaries. Systems like Basic RolePlaying, popularized in Call of Cthulhu, allows players to “push” a roll or spend luck points to succeed where they might normally not. Beyond just skills, systems like Ubiquity, PDQ#, Cortex+, and Fate offer points that can be used to alter a scene; these points are exchanged back and forth between GM and players allowing characters to go beyond their limits, falter at critical junctions, alter dynamics between characters, and more. These shared storytelling mechanics better help blur the line between narrative and rules.

While my own rules system is still in draft mode and needs play testing to be put through its paces, it currently has two separate point pools to allow for a game to feel like fiction. The first pool is for each player character, allowing them to push themselves to success where they may have normally failed. The other set of points belongs to the table as a whole; while they can be used to contribute to the success of an individual, their intention is to allow players to shift the setting, allowing input to the narrative as a whole. My goal is that having two sets of points will keep players from the common experience of hoarding points only for rolls and prompting more back and forth between the players and GM.

As I create characters and write fiction snippets, I think about how things would work if my writing was a game in action. This not only helps me as a writer, ensuring consistency for the setting and characters, but as a game developer, thinking about how an RPG session could feel like shared storytelling—with rules to help guide and balance.

Successes and Failures

I had a conversation on twitter recently about how some players would “fudge” their rolls in order to succeed. I think this is partially due to failure not being interesting in some systems; it’s always a hindrance. Fading Suns offered a “Victory Chart” establishing a measure of success based on the point difference between the goal and the successful roll. When I first played the game, my group established a similar house rule for a “Vanquished Chart,” providing a level of failure based on the point difference between the goal and the failed roll. Thus, the more skilled, the greater a success could be and the more minimal a failure.

Fantasy Flight Games’ Genesys system uses custom dice so that success and failure are layered. A success might carry a “yes, but…” while a failure may allow a “no, however…” The mechanic feels like impromptu acting, always making every roll interesting and helping to avoid the proverbial “fear of failure” that causes some players to lie about their actual dice outcome.

As much as I enjoy the Genesys system, it does have its own learning curve, especially as multiple dice types are rolled at once for a single outcome. As my upcoming system uses character and plot point pools, I’ve decided to look at the rule and house rule employed by my old gaming group, establishing levels of success and failure based on point difference. Lower levels of success will carry a negative stipulation; likewise, lower levels of failure will still offer a boon.

Blurred Lines

Given my work, current tabletop campaign moving to two sessions a month, and things happening in the world, my writing is not exactly going to my original schedule, but it is proceeding. The goal has always been to make a game that never sits too far away from the stories I’m writing and vice-versa. I’m not sure I’ll have much ready to unveil by the end of the year, but it is coming along.