Hello, friends! Bet you’re surprised to hear from me—well, I’m surprised to be drafting a blog post at this moment. Apparently, last week, I was very wrong about my schedule and when my family would be camping; that’s all happening this weekend. So expect no blog post on the 19th.

Or do. I apparently have a terrible grasp of my own schedule. If I get the chance to break away and write something, I generally try to. But no promises!

Also, if you’re surprised to hear that I’m camping with a little one, well, “camping” might be a bit too generous a term. We will be occupied all day, but “day tripping” might be more accurate, since we will be returning home every night. My wife’s extended family will be staying in tents, though, and more power to them. I dislike tent camping.

Actually, that’s probably one of the best parts of having an infant. No tent camping!

Discussions—Recommending Tabletop Role-Playing Games

I’m going to start with a more upbeat discussion item. (Really, more of a recommendation.) Remember last week when I mentioned that Brandon Sanderson was Kickstarting the Stormlight Archives RPG? Well, the man has gone and tricked us all again. Bamboozled. Shocked and flummoxed. It doesn’t exist. There never was a Stormlight Archives RPG. In a puff of dissipating stormlight, the lightweaving fades away…

Instead, he’s Kickstarting the Cosmere RPG. (And also sneaking into the Kickstarter a coffee table art book/encyclopedia for Roshar, which apparently some fans have been clamoring for? It slightly ups the Kickstarter’s appeal outside the tabletop role-playing game community, I guess.) Granted, the game is beginning with the Stormlight Archives (Roshar, specifically) as its setting, but will expand from there. (While I’m excited for the base game, by far I’m most thrilled for the eventual Nalthis [Warbreaker] expansion.)

Anyway. Why bring this up? I’m not affiliated in any way, and I’m certainly not getting paid to share this already multi-million dollar Kickstarter on my little blog.

I really love tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs), and I got excited. Simple as that.

I got hooked on TTRPGs when I was twelve, I think. Thereabouts. My best friend of the time invited me to play Dungeons and Dragons monthly with him (3.5e, for anyone who cares). I didn’t understand anything when I got started, but his dad helped me make a human paladin on a free program called Character Forge, then we printed it out and were off to the races.

I hated that character. I did everything I could to get him killed without making it too obvious what I was doing. I eventually succeeded when the party was attacked by an enormous band of orcs; feigning heroism, I volunteered to stay behind and hold them off. The fight began with my paladin laying into the orcs with broad sweeps of his greataxe, while the orcs surrounded him; then, thanks to my one unfortunate roll of the die, I accidentally chucked my axe across the room, so I was forced to resort to my gauntleted fists. The other players watched, stunned, as a series of miraculous rolls led to my paladin almost single-handedly slaying all of the orcs with only his gauntlets, while my 12-year-old self filled with thrill; then, right as my victory appeared assured, a goblin stabbed me in the back, just after I had decided this paladin deserved a second chance. I ended up getting the heroic sacrifice I ultimately didn’t want. Tragic.

I’d fallen in love with the game well before that moment, but I cemented my adoration of TTRPGs there, tinged with mourning for a lost, unexpected hero.

Shortly after I found a secondhand copy of the rulebooks at a local library book sale and I poured over those manuals time and time again, absorbing everything I could. In the years that followed, I had countless adventures and made countless memories with my friends (and made new friends), as well as expanded to enjoy other Dungeons and Dragons creations, like the Drizzt books by R.A. Salvatore, or Dungeons and Dragons Online (probably an objectively worse MMORPG than World of Warcraft, but still a ton of fun).

As time passed, I branched out. My horizons didn’t truly expand until I discovered systems outside of the Dungeons and Dragons ancestry, but once my eyes were opened I began to expand rapidly, becoming a bit of a collector, well aware that it was impossible to make the time to play everything I found out there—but I could still read a lot of it, collect good ideas, and be inspired with them. The game rules and the fascinating worlds those rules helped bring to life filled me with wonder.

I also fiddled with making my own system. Slowly. Over time. Much more as a hobby than anything else. And I made content for other games, even sold a little of it.

Anyway. I found a lot of joy, as well as community, in tabletop role-playing games. Hearing that one of my favorite set of worlds was being adapted was a big moment for me. So, to celebrate, I decided to share just a few of the games that I’ve enjoyed the most throughout the years!

|| Dungeons and Dragons ||

I specifically recommend 3.5e. The game is only available through thrift stores, secondhand book stores, and print-on-demand services (so far as I know), but there’s a reason the handful of variations on 3rd Edition significantly revitalized Dungeons and Dragons after the fall of TSR: they are amazing! There’s a ludicrous wealth of options and supplements to draw from (of varying quality, admittedly) and literal decades of fan support freely available on the internet—plus, most of the base content in the Player’s Handbook is free.

Some people complain about rule density, while others complain that spellcasters are too powerful compared to all sword-wielders, but I don’t care. It’s all fun, and it sells the fantasy. Not all games, even cooperative ones, need to have perfect character balance to be good; and intentionally unbalanced games sell a different kind of fantasy, anyway. (Generally speaking, a wizard at the peak of his abilities should be stronger than a guy with a sword, even a legendary sword-wielding hero! That’s how world-shaping magic works!)

Of the variations I mentioned above, you have a lot of options if you taste 3.5e and decide you want more. Pathfinder 1e was derived from this game, and is more of the same, but in a good way. Trailblazer is also an extremely fun adaptation on 3.5e that I would adore if it were published in its own rulebook rather than as a book of rules that you need to use in tandem with an original DnD 3.5 Player’s Handbook; it’s kind of like downloading a mod for a video game, but without the convenience Steam provides of implementing the mod for you.

There’s also a Star Wars TTRPG that uses 3.5 rules. It’s pretty good.

5e exists, too. It has the largest player base right now (among all TTRPGs, not just among Dungeons and Dragons editions). I did enjoy playing it, for a time, but Wizards of the Coast, and long-term play of 5e itself, has slowly soured me. I don’t actually recommend playing 5e, but it is one of the easiest entry points into the hobby by virtue of all the people playing it that, for the most part, are helpful and friendly.

|| Call of Cthulhu RPG ||

If you enjoy mystery and horror; if you don’t like heroic fantasy and want your heroes to be in constant danger; and especially if you love the works of HP Lovecraft, Call of Cthulhu RPG is perfect for you. My experience with this system started with 6e, and it introduced me to a much more narrative RPG game system, and classless skill-based systems, the latter of which I really latched on to. The game has since progressed to 7th edition, which in my opinion is more of the same good fun.

|| Rules-Light RPGs ||

The rulebooks above will try to come up with a rule for nearly any conceivable thing. The advantage is that there almost always is an objective framework by which to adjudicate uncertain actions; the disadvantage is that reading through the rulebook can feel like slogging through a college textbook (subject: math), while reading through the character sheet can be as confusing as a college assignment (also math).

That’s where rules-light (and micro) TTRPGs come in. These games very intentionally try to be as slim as possible, some of which literally only a page long. Sometimes this is accomplished by providing one or two very flexible systems for adjudicating uncertain actions, leaving everything else for the guy running the game to decide on; sometimes this is accomplished by providing a very specific play situation for the game, making it unnecessary to come up with rules for a hundred thousand possible situations. Either way, a well-done rules-light RPG is a breath of fresh air.

Honey Heist is a delightful one-page role-playing game where you play a gang of criminal bears looking to break into a bee convention to steal their honey. It’s utterly hilarious, extremely simple to play, and requires almost no prep to set up and play.

TinyDungeon 2nd edition (and its ten billion adaptations for other genres) provides a fun, simple way to have a much more classic TTRPG experience, but slimmed down to some of its barest elements. Personally, I think this might be the perfect system to introduce children to, or to introduce people who are curious about TTRPGs but nervous about time commitment or rules complexity. I’ve played many games that I planned out in fifteen minutes, and then proceeded to entertain family for two hours (or so). That said, TinyDungeon is simple enough that I, personally, solely consider it a gateway game.

EZD6 is the bomb. For me, it’s the next place to go (and a good place for many people to stop) right after TinyDungeon introduces you to the genre. Still extremely light on rules, but a little crunchier than TinyDungeon; ridiculously flexible systems that let you do whatever you want, including playing with real spellcasters without cluttering up the game or slowing things down; the guy running the game can still prep a genuinely good, several-hour game in fifteen to thirty minutes; and teaching people the game is almost as simple as saying, “Just tell me what you want to do; roll these dice when I tell you to.” I can’t get over how good this game is.

|| Board Game TTRPGs ||

Some board games inhabit a weird grey area where they are basically TTRPGs, but since the game runs itself (rather than having a Dungeon Master, Game Master, or other moniker for guy who replaces what a game designer and computer would do in a video game), your freedom is a bit more limited than in a true role-playing game. That doesn’t mean you can’t have epic experiences, however, with the added bonus of still being able to play even if no one is prepared to run again.

Gloomhaven is the king in this area, so far as I am aware. Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion is a really good starter set that eases you into Gloomhaven‘s rules and world, and I would highly recommend starting there. My wife and I loved playing the game together.

Discussions—You Should be Insensitive and Un-inclusive in TTRPGs

I can already imagine the comments that sub-title is going to draw from people who don’t actually read this section. (Granted, it is intentionally inflammatory.)

To be clear, I’m not actually arguing that games should be offensive or exclusive. But, I won’t argue that they shouldn’t be, either. They should be whatever they are made to be, and whatever their players enjoy. In short, I’m trying to make a case that games should go back to being games, not platforms for activism, which is an issue that the game-makers of the industry are struggling with right now.

This discussion came to my mind while reading the beta rules for the Cosmere RPG. Specifically, the rules on “Injury Effects” on page 49. I won’t quote the whole page, but I can share this one paragraph:

Portraying Injuries and Disabilities. If you suffer an injury, you’re encouraged to research the ways real people have adapted to similar injuries and disabilities, then try to realistically portray them without stereotypes. Autobiographical sources provide the best insight…

No. No, this is terrible advice. At best, it’s disingenuous. At worst, it’s intentionally poisonous to the escapist fantasy that is a tabletop role-playing game—you should not need to read real-world autobiographies to play a fictional game. Unfortunately, it’s the exact same kind of disingenuity you can find almost anywhere these days masquerading as kindness or sensitivity. And these kinds of “warnings” are everywhere in the TTRPG community.

Here’s why rules (and rule suggestions) like this are disingenuous: they are attempts to make “real” or “realistic” topics that may be sensitive to some people in the real world, while still gamifying those topics for entertainment. It’s an attempt to have a cake and eat it, too; to choose to build sensitive topics into a game while saying, “Hey, don’t act imaginatively with these game rules, okay? Someone might get sad.”

Game designers, if you don’t want people to be bothered by your game’s portrayal of a sensitive topic, don’t build it into the game rules—or build the game rules in such a way that they accomplish your goal of sensitivity, rather than needing to tell players to police themselves from having fun.

Gamers, here’s the thing. You don’t owe any group anything. You especially, when playing a game with friends and/or family, don’t owe any theoretical someone (or someones) that might, maybe, be offended by what you are doing sensitivity for their imagined feelings. Literally the only group that matters is the people you are playing with, that you are all working together to have a good time. If playing up an injury or disability in a silly or stereotypical way accomplishes that, you should do it, regardless of how such things might play out in the real world. Of course, if the people you are playing with would be bothered by such actions, you should probably have a conversation with the specific individual(s) about boundaries, since you are playing a cooperative game. In a best-case scenario, you will find a compromise that involves both of you giving a little.

Now, let’s get more specific about why statements like the above are dumb. Looking at the rules themselves refute this token effort to “realistically portray [injured or disabled people] without stereotypes.” Just a paragraph earlier we read:

Similarly, if you suffer a permanent injury during your adventures, you might eventually learn to compensate, removing the effects of any conditions it applied. In the story, you still experience the injury’s narrative effects, but you’ve found ways of adapting, and to represent that, you might even remove that injury’s mechanical condition. [Emphasis Added.]

One example provided is a blind character becoming so accustomed to living with blindness that it is no longer disorienting; in other words, the character effectively regains just as clear an awareness of her surroundings as a seeing person. (The rules indirectly double down on being able to ignore this specific disability with how the Cosmere RPG handles “senses” [p29], but I won’t go into detail on that since the point ends the same, even if we get there along a different path.)

How the heck is that an effort to be realistic? Debilitating, long-term injuries have permanent effects; if you want to be realistic, such effects might be able to be mitigated (such as a paralyzed person in a wheelchair having more mobility than they would have otherwise, but still being unable to climb stairs), but they won’t ever just go away. You will always deal with a disadvantage that abled people do not have; if the goal is to be realistic, well, that’s reality.

This isn’t even an effort to do away with stereotypes. The “effectively magical blind man” who can “see” using his other senses is a trope (a type of stereotype); it shows up in media on occasion, and it could be interpreted as offensive to the blind (not saying it would be justified, just that the hyper-sensitive would need to address this to remain consistent). Some seeing people even genuinely believe, in the real world, that blind people do exactly this, replacing sight 1:1 with a combination of their other senses!

In other words, the cake is neither had, nor was any of it eaten.

Further analyzing game rules as written goes to show just how silly this hyper-sensitivity becomes. The trauma of death and injury are real things; veterans are generally ignored by the public, but they are examples of the horrors that life-and-death battle can have on your mind, and the long-term effects such things can have on communities (their own, and as witnesses of the people they fought). Why isn’t the combat section of this rulebook followed up by a quick psychological and sociological analysis of the effect of violence on the human mind and society, and how to sensitively portray such things? After all, doing otherwise might look like we’re glorifying that violence, and how dare we do that. After all, we might have fun!

All right, I let myself get carried away there, but do you see my point? Politically correct hypersensitivity-of-the-moment gets unnaturally shoved into fictional, escapist experiences, and the result is extremely disingenuous (and dissonant); it’s simply not possible to be sensitive to everything, but leaving anything out is hypocritical by those rules. But we’re not playing games to mimic reality, we’re playing them to experience something else, and thereby have fun.

One more example, one more example. Page 31 describes how the game rule “cultural expertise” can grant your character languages:

If you have cultural expertise, you’re deeply knowledgeable about that group’s traditions, customs, and superstitions. You also know their history and current politics. You can communicate with others from that group through spoken language, signed language, other forms of communication, or all of the above.

Here’s the subtle bit that’s both unrealistic and stereotyped: the assumption that knowing a culture’s spoken language would (or should) be automatically paired with signed language. If you’ve spent any time studying signed languages, you know that signed languages are never 1:1 with whatever language they are associated with, and the culture of Deaf people often is very different than the culture of the hearing people they live among. Just assuming this can all be lumped into hearing culture would be, frankly, offensive to many of the Deaf people I know, and (more importantly) a complete failing of the goal to be both realistic and avoid stereotypes.

Oh, let’s also not forget the fact that Deaf populations tend to be very small and somewhat isolated from hearing populations, despite living among them; this results in knowing Sign being a highly specialized skill, not reasonable for most people to know even if they are experts on a particular culture, its traditions and customs, and its spoken language.

And, finally, casually granting a knowledge of signed language is funny in the context of this particular RPG, as nowhere in any Sanderson Cosmere novel is it even suggested, to my knowledge, that Deaf and hearing cultures are blended enough to reasonably expect more or all people to know both languages. Yes—knowing a spoken language and a signed language often associated with it means you are bilingual. The point being, such decisions are not only moralistically disingenuous (when trying to toe both hyper-sensitivity and gamify things), they are also immersion-breaking.

(As a tangent, I’m going to give Cosmere RPG the benefit of the doubt—the above language is not very strong, and is more of a “You can choose whether or not you want to know signed language as part of this cultural expertise.” But many other TTRPGs, such as Level Up, assume that knowing a spoken language should always be paired with knowing its signed version.)

It’s all just ridiculous. And, frankly, it’s insulting; building lectures and hyper-sensitivity into these escapist games carries the subtle undertones of “Hey, you can’t treat people in these unique groups in the same silly way you treat everyone else, because they can’t handle it.” In reality, some of the toughest people in the world live their lives disadvantaged (or otherwise in some way isolated); they don’t need to be protected by game designers, they already handle themselves just fine. One doesn’t keel over and die when you make a joke, because they aren’t fairies who are deathly allergic to kids that don’t believe in them.

Now, despite everything I have said, I don’t have any direct issues with the Cosmere RPG. More likely than not the game designers are following industry trends and don’t actually care one way or another; if it hadn’t become somewhat standard to include these mini-lectures in rulebooks, I doubt the above mini-lectures would have made it into this one. I am, admittedly, using the Cosmere RPG as a bit of a whipping boy for the rest of the industry, but this game can take it. It’s supported by Sanderson’s undyingly loyal fanbase, and it’s nearly raised seven million on Kickstarter. I’m absolutely punching up here.

I also want to state that there probably are, somewhere out there, people who have good intentions when adding these mini-lectures to games, or when championing them. Probably. Maybe. I would argue, for the reasons stated above, that these people are horribly misguided (and perhaps have a limited grasp of reality), and having good intentions by no means results in them actually doing good, but I’m happy to tell them “You meant well” before sending them off to the corner to think about the asinine things they’ve produced and supported.

But here’s the real hot take: outside of the lectures and disingenuous moralizing, there’s actually nothing inherently wrong with the above “inclusivity,” provided you are doing what makes for the most fun experience with the people you are playing with—which usually involves staying internally consistent in content and tone for the world you are collaboratively building, the fictional world that is not our real world. Does it make sense for the game you are playing to be very sensitive about the consequences of injury and disability? If yes, do so! If not, be extremely silly and have fun with it! Does it make sense for the game you are playing to have everyone in the world know both spoken language and signed language? Nothing inherently wrong with that, go and do! Is your world mysteriously designed with ramps and flat, level ground literally everywhere, making all dungeons, crumbling ruins, and mountain hikes wheelchair-accessible? You do you, I guess!

The issue comes in when moralists try to tell people how things should be done, the right way to play. They hide behind false kindness and sensitivity, when in reality they are being tyrannical and authoritarian. The correct answer, always, to whether or not something is good is the answer to this question: Will it improve the experience of the people I’m playing with? If yes, then it’s good, regardless of how insensitive it may be to people not present.

(Moralizing in the other direction—saying that we should never be sensitive—is also not good, is also tyrannical and authoritarian, despite my title above. But that’s not the issue we’re dealing with right now, so this acknowledgement probably didn’t even deserve a paragraph word count of almost fifty.)

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I apparently had a lot more to get out on this topic than I thought I did… The thing is, I’m tired of weak people who are constantly anxious about offending people (either everyone, or the politically correct someone[s] of the moment) working their way into all areas of entertainment and, like a worm in an apple, subsequently destroying and rotting everything around them. Don’t let them have any power over you. If you are acting in a way that offends such people, you’re probably on the right track.

Maybe better said: never be afraid to be risk offense. That’s the only way to maintain freedom of thought. Tactfully judge for right situations, of course, but know that someone taking offense to something does not immediately mean they are right for being offended or you are wrong for risking offense.

But that’s off topic.

Writing Updates

Hazel Halfwhisker… is out of revisions! At least, out of “catch up with myself and make sure my plans are on track” revisions. A real “draft 1 to draft 2” revision will come later—the point being, I am officially, totally writing new stuff for the story, and I plan on continuing all the way until draft 1.5 is completely finished.

Currently at 215 pages and 116,094 words. My gut tells me I’m just over halfway through the story—we shall see.

As for the article (tentative title, Visions of the Future?…), I’m taking a brief pause on that—my reading time is more limited than I’d prefer, and right now I’m reading through the beta rules for the Cosmere RPG. Once that is finished I’ll read Blindsight (and, perhaps, Echopraxia, which goes a bit more into what life is like on Earth than Blindsight does), then compile my notes and figure out what I really have to say. (Already read Theft of Fire—couldn’t hold me back from that book!)

I haven’t talked about the eventual World of Murid TTRPG in a while… Because I haven’t been actively working on it, as my other writing projects are more important—BUT all this TTRPG excitement has led me to start note-taking and planning some more, once again. We’ll see how useful that proves to me when I ultimately get more time to work on it.

Send-Off

Are you a fan of TTRPGs? If not, do you have periphery experiences, such as through friends who enjoy the games, or through live-plays (like Dimension20)?