Forgotten Gods

There are so many gods, it's inevitable that some get forgotten. We can forget gods, but let's not forget the people who made them. Contributors will be listed in parentheses.

1. Wailing God of Signal-From-Noise: Like the ability of babies to learn the statistical properties of language through mere exposure that persists to this day, there was once a god in the linguistic dark ages when language first evolved with no fossil record to show for it. This god granted humans the ability to cry and laugh and scream, and to create distinct sounds for different kinds of predators. This god was borrowed from nature, it was not originally a god for humans, and when eventually they found (or created) their own gods, they had no more need for Wailing God of Signal-From-Noise, which is why today humans struggle to understand probabilities and large numbers.
2. Shore-Striver (Wasitlikely): God of those nameless organisms that dedicated their lives to crawling incrementally further onto solid ground, especially those who made it so far they died on the returning stretch.
3. Nameless Mother (Sheepandsorcery): In a cavern, on a mountain, where the dawn just pokes a single rosy finger into the stony crevice, there is a crack along a back wall, smoothed by a long dead creek into a yonic shape, in front of which have been rolled two smooth round stones, one on top of another, small on top, larger on the bottom. The top stone is vaguely rough for in the first age of man hands carved a face into this stone. This is the first god, the first goddess ever invented by mankind and the mother of all the gods, yet she has been forgotten. Time has worn away her identity and this is not even the first time. The one who carved these stones was not making an idol, only something by which he might remember his mother. Now she is forgotten. Now she is remembered forever.
4. Folded-Wrinkles-Blossoming (Archonsmarchon): Back when stars could lie and crows could laugh, people knew how to wrap themselves in their own sagging skins to be remade in the prime of their youth. The god who guided this process was called Folded-Wrinkles-Blossoming, at least to some.
   In this time humanity was abundant, filling every corner of the Earth, yet this abundance was not to our strength - it made us the favoured prey of horrors: the hunting marrowflame, morph-again locusts, and Gib the Goreful being the few that remain to today.
   Humanity rejected their living rebirth, and cried out for Death. Death answered, and was so flattered by our self-offering it evangelized unto our enemies as well, inflicting mortal weaknesses or slaying them outright. It has been favoured ever since.
5. World-Eater (Stygianseas): Bones aren't alive. The cells threaded through them are, and they heal due to being re-engineered, but bones are a mineral. World-Eater is the ancient protist-god of... something, of which biomineralization is a subcomponent. Its a god of structure but not determination. Its form is bulbous shells and tests, frustules and skeletons (both exo and endo) blooming off of each other asymmetrically and irregularly.
   World-Eater has been valued on earth since the first cells began to build biomineralized shells. Those few who remembered it in the first days of the Hominids understood that each flint tool or carved den was also sacred to it.
   All worlds with biomineralization or tool use are in its (un)awareness, but it is at the end of the day a very ancient sort of being.
6. The Antecedent of Falsehoods (Glassziggurat): Who leapt into the mind of the first being that ever slept. It had so much fun there that it lost track of time and vanished when the creature woke.
7. The God of Truth: Many Gods claim to be the God of Truth, but Truth was forgotten long ago. Or really it's more like we turned our backs on it, because it's ugly, and inconvenient. It looks diseased but it's not, that's just the germs inside all of us, even the good ones. Those maggots in its eyes, you have those too, they're eating the skin around your eyelashes right now. It has a dusty, flaky aura, like marine snow, but it's just illuminating that which our consciousness attenuates, all the meaningless murk, the detritus life leaves in its wake. Perhaps it's for the best, good riddance, c'est la vie.

Appendix-N for a "Weird & Wonderful" Animist Setting I haven't Written Yet: Pariah by way of Maximum Recursion Depth(?)

I've been slowly conceiving of a "Weird & Wonderful" Animist setting, percolating over the last couple years or so at least. I've probably posted other versions of this idea that I'm forgetting, or at least there are other ideas I've posted about that feed into this. It's probably reductive to solely refer to it as an Animist setting, but I don't know how else to do so that isn't rooted in or going to provoke preconceived notions that I don't mean to provoke, that was the best I could think to do.

In it's current shape it's not connected to the shared setting of Maximum Recursion Depth Vol. 1 and MRDVol. 2 directly, but I see it as spiritually connected. Whereas MRD Vol. 1 uses as a metaphor Buddhism and the satire of Journey to the West, and MRD Vol. 2 uses as a metaphor Judaism and my thoughts on Jewish American Identity, this is more so inspired by Animism and Humanism from paleolithic, neolithic, and indigenous cultures both historically and in modern times (acknowledging modern indigenous cultures are not "living museums"). But just as with MRD Vol. 1 and 2, spinning those metaphors into something distinctly and unambiguously my own. I don't want to hew too closely to any specific belief or culture, because I don't want to misrepresent them (I'm already worried about some of my terminology and explanations here, but hopefully the intent comes through) nor risk appropriating them. They are inspirations in a distilled sense, and if you've read anything I've written before, hopefully this is all clear. Anyway... 

The single-sentence pitch might be: Pariah by way of Maximum Recursion Depth(?)

The Appendix-N ended up being so long, and the setting itself still so nascent, that I'm actually going to post this first, you all can digest it, and then later I'll post about the setting and you can try to interpret it from this lens.

It might be a fun exercise to consider what world you might create for yourself from these disparate inspirations.

Appendix-N

I already feel guilty if I forget someone or chose not to include them, but so it goes :/. Also, if you're reading this in the future, hopefully I've since read some of the things here that I reference but acknowledge I have not read yet. And I bet by the time I actually do anything formally with this setting, there will be many more inspirations.

PARIAH (Alone in the Labyrinth). Brilliant setting and arguably the beginning of some of these ideas, from my interview with Semiurge (Archons March On) and subsequent interview with Sofinho. One day I will get back to doing interviews...

Semiurge: To go back to Pariah's setting, it's hit home a bit of what is conventional wisdom for osr settings that didn't previously land for me. The post-apocalyptic, social order has broken down sort of stuff. But in kind of the opposite direction, pre-civilization rather than post-civilization. Smaller cast, smaller world, no big powerful states to exist in the shadow of. More room for weirdos and weird doings.

As discussed in my interview with Sofinho, I also found the Realms and Entheogens in particular deeply inspiring; this weird psychedelic blurring of reality, and defying the preconceived notions and categorical thinking of most kinds of magics, planes, and elements found in many other settings.

Sapiens by Harari and The Dawn of Everything by Graebor & Wengrow. Despite the fact that the latter frequently responds to the former and people seem to put them in mutually exclusive boxes, or perhaps because of that, I include these two together.

Sapiens provides an impressively comprehensive and coherent look at the history of humanity, with some big picture ideas around superorganisms and the nature of religions and ideologies which strongly resonated with me.

Dawn of Everything provides deep and detail-oriented insights into various indigenous and historical cultures, arguing for how things were and how things could be in ways that, while I have some qualms or open questions, I nonetheless find compelling and aspirational.

Ènziramire of On a Majestic Fly Whisk. A brilliant newer TTRPG blogger and academic thinker exposing me to so much more about Africa's cultures, and his own thoughts and ideas. An OSR Aesthetic of Ruin, Have you Met My Ghoulfriend, and Mantismen come to mind most immediately, but all of his posts are amazing.

Ubuntuism the African humanist philosophy. I still have read very little into it unfortunately, since very little of it is readily available, although Enziramire has pointed me to some of Samkange's other works. If Cartesian Rationalism says "I think therefore I am", Ubuntuism says "I am therefore we are". Given the interconnectedness of all people, any one's existence is confirmation of the existence of all others, and the acknowledgment of our collective being. An elegant synthesis of ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. Amazing. Another book on African philosophy I hope to read that Enziramire turned me onto: The African Novel of Ideas: Philosophy and Individualism in the Age of Global Writing. 

I assume many of the ideas in that book would fall into the subsequent category below, or outside of either of these categories, which is of course the problem with trying to discretely categorize things like this. I apologize in advance if my categorical scheme between these paragraphs implies any ignorance on my part, but anyway I am not taking these categories as Truths of the universe.

Animism. This is such a broad category that I don't even know where to begin pointing to, and frankly I have not done nearly enough formal reading. I used to be one of those people who thought of animism along a linear spectrum of "progression", but I realize now how mistaken that idea was. As with Ubuntuism, or the Panentheism I see in Judaism, there is an understanding in Animism of the interconnectedness of things, a kind of graph theory by way of spirituality. Some Animism or indigenous culture-related books I hope to read eventually:

• Soul Hunters: Hunting, Animism, and Personhood among the Siberian Yukaghirs
• How It Is: The Native American Philosophy of V. F. Cordova
• Us, Relatives: Scaling and Plural Life in a Forager World (Ethnographic Studies in Subjectivity Book 12)

Very much open to other suggestions! I'd also like to read more about Shintoism and the Shinto/Buddhist interaction, indigenous Japanese animism such as the Ainu, and the Jomon era (I am somewhat knowledgeable on some of these things already); Australian, Polynesian, Pacific Island indigenous beliefs (and also the math of their astronomy and naval navigation, if known); Inca, Maya, Olmec, Teotihuacan, Hopewell, and other civilizations of the Americas; Celtic Animism; the list goes on...

Somewhat of a tangent, but I'm also interested in the Animist/Dualist interaction, like the recurring Hero Twins in relation to an otherwise Animist schema in many Native American mythologies, the Ondinonk / soul desires concept of the Wendat which I can find very little about online but read about through Dawn of Everything; some of my thoughts around the Philosophy of Games (see that section further below) intersect with these spiritual and cultural ideas. Likewise, the way DoE describes the historical trade practices in the Americas as being rooted not in market / barter economics as we think of it, but in heroic adventures, art, and spiritual wellness; I believe the interaction between these ways of thinking with various aspects of systems or quantitative thinking is profound and vastly underexplored in modern culture, even among more radical countercultures that I'm aware of. Also interested in the dualism of Zoroastrianism, Gnosticism, and Yazidi mythology, but I'm not sure if any of that fits into this so that's entirely a tangent...

Poetry, Manifestos, and Countercultural Literature. A broad category and I'm not sure how to describe it's influence necessarily. Perhaps inspired by my interview with Ms. Screwhead of Was It Likely (and Iconoclastic Flow!). Much of what appeals to me about poetry is its synthesis of structure and aesthetics. Listen to this episode of the Ezra Klein podcast, they explain it better. I've been thinking about numinousness, specifically through a conversation with Semiurge, and I believe that ties into this as well. I've been reading things like James Baldwin and the Beat Poets, and some of the manifestos like The Dada Manifesto, The Manifesto of Futurism, and hopefully soon the The Surrealist Manifesto (I'll also get around to properly rereading The Communist Manifesto some day...). It may not directly influence the setting, but it's influencing how I'm thinking about things generally. All of this talk about numinousness and poetry reminds me that from Semiurge's suggestion, I really need to read Novalis as well.

The Philosophy of Games. I've been thinking about "games" for a while. Inspired by Kondiaronk and the Wendat people (by way of aforementioned Dawn of Everything), the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen (he had a great Ezra Klein interview as well, and he also has a book, Games: Agency as Art which admittedly I have not read yet), Genetic Algorithms, and TTRPGs in the abstract. I also need to read Homo Ludens. In the same way that language and writing have been transformative technologies that meaningfully influence society and individual human consciousness, I believe other transformative technologies have existed, or could exist, and that the pursuit of such is no less worthy than that of any other cultural pursuit, or at the very least is a worthwhile pursuit within the context of creative endeavors, the arts, fiction, gaming, etc.

The Aquarians of Aquarian Dawn. Yes I'm referencing my own setting. I still think there's more to explore with that, and I'm better equipped to do so now than I was a 4+ years ago when I was running that campaign. Mike of Sheep & Sorcery described The Aquarians as like a Fantasy version of the Tau from WH40K. While I'm referencing my own ideas feeding into this, I'm also working on something called The Mycelium Matrix with Huffa, which conceptually feeds into this setting well.

The X-Men Comics, specifically the Krakoan Era, and the Cerebro Podcast by Connor Goldsmith. I've always been a fan of X-Men, but the Krakoan Era has really been exceptional (note that I'm still like at least a year behind and very slowly catching up while simultaneously reading through the Claremont era and other classics...). I love how Krakoa picks up kind of where Grant Morrison's New X-Men left off philosophically, trying to not just fit the X-Men into a metaphor of the status quo, but to elevate them, to explore how the interaction of spiritual, intellectual, scientific, and queer ideas might create something radical and powerful and new, something Weird and Numinous and technomagical, while acknowledging flaws and failings and the ways in which they might be undermined or might undermine themselves. It's one of the most interesting takes on the Superhero Mythology that I've ever seen, and it's amazing how consistent and organized it has been across the entire line of books, many creative teams, over a span of years, which is in itself a testament to the narrative they are telling. There's just nothing else like it afaik; even despite the corporate constraints it tells a more interesting and profound story than most anything else of its kind. It is a profoundly honest attempt to explore a new kind of society. I find it inspiring and aspirational in the same way I find the ideas explored in Dawn of Everything, or those explained below.

Charles Stross' Accelerando and Glasshouse, Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of series, and Quipu, or the importance of numinousness, and considering alternative STEM frameworks and the interaction of philosophy and STEM through science fiction or other cultures.

A reductive explanation of Stross and Tchaikovsky, and why I group them together, is that they each explore in a brilliant, imaginative, and at least semi-plausible way, transhumanist worlds, through AI/singularity and animal uplifts, respectively. Return to my quote from Semiurge on Pariah to hopefully at least understand in part the circular relationship between any meaningful exploration of the past and future. I am still reading Glasshouse, and have not read Children of Memory yet.

Semiurge also recently suggested an idea around reconceptualizing our categorical frameworks of knowledge, i.e. the semi-arbitrary distinction between humanities and STEM, suggesting as one possibility the idea of numinousness as a better dimensionality reduction (that's my own paraphrasing of it, using Principle Component Analysis as a metaphor here). Some of this I believe is expressed in his Random Numbers, itself inspired by my Weird Colors. This also gets back to the poetry stuff.

As someone who values STEM / systems-thinking, I also want to explore alternative frameworks of doing so, either from science / speculative fiction as explained above, through poetry and spirituality and in the numinous, or through indigenous or historical cultures. I find ideas like the Inca Quipu's knot-based encoding system and other historical or indigenous maths and sciences absolutely fascinating (including modern indigenous maths [EDITED: Hyperlinking this post from the future (it's lower down in the post...)]), and beneficial to humanity as a whole both in a one-dimensional sense as the net effect of its application, but even more so in the multidimensional profundity that comes in having multiple frameworks from which to think about things, and all the ways one may combine them. Below are a couple books that I admittedly have not yet read but that I hope to read eventually. My exploration of Gematria would also fall under this category.

• Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding in the Andean Knotted-String Records (The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies)
• Mathematics of the Incas: Code of the Quipu (Dover Books on Mathematics)

Norbert Wiener

While he is more so an inspiration for MRD Vol. 2, I continue to think Norbert Wiener is someone more people should be reading. He is the originator of the concept of cybernetics, and also someone who clearly thinks critically and philosophically about the world, with generally leftist/progressive views which he was very frank about, and an excellent example of the numinousness found in the intersection of STEM and philosophy. The Human Use of Human Beings, and God & Golem, Inc. are both fairly short reads and geared towards a general audience, and I would recommend both of them (the former especially).

Finally, many of these ideas have been coalescing through my ongoing conversations with my friend Dr. Flux.

Tunnels & Trolls: Maximum Hack Pt. 1, Character Creation and Attributes

This is a super old draft from like 2019. I kinda stopped with TNT after I had an off-putting interaction with one of the TNT devs (won't say which one, and will say explicitly it was nothing terrible, more just a difference of opinion?) and also because my Aquarian Dawn TNT Campaign got killed by covid (or maybe it had gotten disrupted by work, I don't remember anymore).

Anyway, I haven't been up for writing lately but wanted to post something, so I'm digging this out, make what you will of it. There's a part 2, I forget if that's sufficient or if I had left it in an incomplete state, but I'll post part 2 eventually as well.

design notes in this color

Tunnels & Trolls: Maximum

Or, 

The GLOG of TNT

I've been playing TNT for a little while now and really love the system. Here were my initial thoughts when I first started getting into it. This is my attempt to create a new version of the game, one that streamlines things and makes some heavy modifications, but is still true to what TNT is; in the spirit of DIY efforts towards old-school D&D from the OSR movement, and in particular GLOG. Even though I actually have very little experience playing GLOG, one thing that I like about it, is its emphasis on streamlining DIY and customization, and I hope this hack for TNT ends up working in a similar regard. While this hack does change the core game, it should be mostly backwards compatible with other versions of TNT, with a little bit of adjustment. It is probably presumptuous of me to assume this hack could have the same impact for TNT as GLOG has had for OSR, but that's the goal. I should also say that at this stage this hack is mostly untested, except for the pieces of retroactively integrated into my current campaign, but TNT is a simple enough system that I feel reasonably comfortable with the changes I've made to the system.

One additional note: I may decide to "rebrand" this entirely, removing TNT-specific terminology and making it effectively its own game, since TNT doesn't have a proper OGL or equivalent. My understanding is that the TNT people are pretty reasonable, but if I take this far enough, I'd like to actually have ownership of it, and I think the end product will likely be distinct enough to justify it. But at least for now I will continue to refer to it as a TNT hack.

I've been appreciating following Jones Smith's Fiction First system unfold at wasitlikely, so I've decided to break this hack up into several posts as well, and then I'll collate it all at the end. This makes it more manageable, and it also allows for me to adjust things based on any feedback.

Another note, I will likely continue to make new Character Types and Hacks for TNT Deluxe as I've been doing, but when possible, I will try to include versions for TNT Max as well, and also to make TNT Max versions of other Character Types I've already posted.

Character Creation

Roll 3d6 six times, drop the lowest two, and assign the values to the attributes Physique (PHY), Finesse (FIN), Presence (PRE), and Luck (LCK). You can be less generous at your table if you'd prefer, but I like to be nice.

If you roll triple values on any one of those 3d6 rolls, roll 3d6 again and take the total as a single value, and put a * next to that attribute for every triplet.

Either before or after attribute rolls, choose or roll randomly for a Character Type and apply any starting abilities.

Take an equipment package or some starting amount of gold (250 for instance).

Take three talents.

I've reduced the attributes for simplicity and out of personal preference. I'll explain my reasoning for these attributes next. Otherwise, this is mostly similar to standard TNT. I increased the number of talents because I think talents are a nice, light, flexible way to give characters special abilities, and talents will also effectively replace kindreds. I realize kindreds (race in D&D) is something many people like about the game, but I don't think it works as well with the decreased number of attributes since it's based on mulitplicative modifiers and how they affect combat adds. Even with D&D I prefer a race-as-flavor or race-as-class approach. However, if you want special kindred abilities, talents can be used in that regard (as discussed in a later post).

Attributes

Physique (PHY): This attribute reflects physical abilities, such as the ability to inflict physical harm, fighting skill, weight-lifting / encumbrance (if you're so inclined), physical durability, fortitude, etc.

• Use for PHY SRs.
• Add each point above 12 to damage total as Combat Adds.
• PHY also reflects the maximum amount of damage you can take before being incapacitated.

Finesse (FIN): This attribute reflects dexterity, flexibility, acrobatics, speed, agility, defensive maneuvers, hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, etc. 

• Use for FIN SRs.
• Add each point above 12 to damage total as Combat Adds.
• Use for missile attacks and finesse attack SRs.

Presence (PRE): This attribute reflects certain ephemeral aspects of a person; their force of will, magical abilities, ability to draw an audience, etc.

• Use for PRE SRs.
• Certain spells have a PRE minimum in order to be cast.
• PRE also reflects maximum mana for spellcasting.

Luck (LK): This attribute reflects luck as an actual force of nature in the universe, but also gets used as a catch-all for things that might not fit neatly into the other attributes, such as item durability (Wear & Tear). In certain cases it is also used to defend against the effects of magic; primarily curses or magic which affects fates and destinies.

• Use for LK SRs.
• Add each point above 12 to damage total as Combat Adds.
• Use for Wear & Tear SRs.

Attributes are where this hack most differ from core TNT. I prefer to have a few, very broad, very archetypal attributes. TNT Deluxe attributes aren't bad, and I can understand why somebody might want to keep Strength and Consitution or Intelligence and Wizardry separate, but that's not what I'm doing here. I've said before on this blog that I'm a big fan of Cypher System, so this is somewhat modeled after that. I've always liked the idea of "Presence"; in part because I don't like Intelligence as a quantitative attribute, but also because Presence allows you to condense magical ability, charisma, and some of these other ephemeral qualities in a useful and interesting way, so you can avoid dump stats while still codifying these qualities. I don't plan on making the curse / fates aspect of LCK a major sub-system, if I make it at all it would be bolt-on, but I do think that with four attributes, it doesn't make sense to have magic condensed solely into a single attribute. 

In subsequent posts I will talk about the different character types, talents, character advancement, and other basic mechanics of the game. It is mostly pretty similar to TNT Deluxe except where it is accounting for these attributes, but I do try to somewhat standardize characters and NPCs with a uniform Character Rating metric, but I'm getting ahead of myself!

Was It Likely: Weird & Wonderful Interviews

Was it Likely?

Max: I remember you talking about game design on your blog in a way that felt very FKR, way before the modern version of FKR was a thing. That's not a question, but I don't think you get enough credit for that. But anyway, is this still how you feel about game design? Am I misrepresenting your thoughts?

Jones: Well first of all thanks, it's been honestly pretty gratifying to see FKR catch on like it has (so like, in an extremely limited and niche way), though I'm not at all sure if any of its major proponents have even heard of my blog. But to the point, I would say that I probably prefer more procedure than the average FKR player, though I enjoy the hell out of a fully FKR campaign. I think that it's often the case that game mechanics, more than anything else, offer a way to keep track of information that might otherwise be forgotten, and can push for a type of play that might not necessarily occur intuitively to the players. 

Max: Can you elaborate on what you mean by procedure?

Jones: Sure, I guess another way to frame it would be "game mechanics or the relationships between game mechanics"

Max: I'm sure you have some thoughts on the "does system matter" debate then? (jk :p!)

Jones: God, apparently so judging from the absolutely rabid responses I've gotten on my thoughts around that. I think of TTRPGs as mainly an extension of playing make believe with toys; you can definitely use a toy dinosaur in the way the maker intended, but you might also decide it's a pretty good hammer if you're tired of playing dinosaurs and want to play construction instead. Furthermore, the toy isn't even necessary in order to play dinosaurs or any other game; it's just a useful prop, a nice locus for everyone's imagination to latch onto. Things that I think can often take the place of rules include like: a good playlist, pictures, poetry, selections from novels, movies, etc. Anything that's going to help everyone develop a shared imaginary space with minimal "hey wait I wasn't imagining this like that at all!"

Max: That latter point is very FKR haha. The former though, the dinosaur analogy, I find that one especially interesting. It suggests a type of abstract thinking that is fairly rare. It's like this problem solving task I remember, where one of the items is a box of screws or nails or something, and anyway, the optimal solution involves dumping the screws and just using the box, but most people don't realize that until after it's demonstrated. One could say they failed to think outside the box. Problem solving is often thought of as a core tenet of OSR-style play, but I think sometimes people are very myopic about  what counts as problem solving, or what kinds of problems they're trying to solve.

Max: Are there any kinds of problems in particular you're interested in exploring in games? Do you agree with this notion in the first place?

Jones: In a funny way, the questions I want to explore in games are all very selfish: most of my mechanics start out as a way for me exert the minimum amount of effort necessary to achieve an effect I want. How to consistently generate good ideas without inspiration, how to make the setting feel deep without creating a world bible. Hence my obsession with generators, tarot, divination, etc. With regards to "OSR Problem Solving" some would question whether I have any right whatsoever to weigh in on this, bc the games I run at this point could only be considered OSR in the same way a baby born with gill marks could be considered a fish. But I agree that essentially, tackling open ended problems is one of the things that TTRPGs do best; problem solving requires engagement with the fiction, creative thinking, and all that good stuff.

Max: There's certainly something to be said for efficiency. I was reluctant to use generators for a long time, because worldbuilding and the meticulousness it can sometimes involve is a major part of what I enjoy about tabletop RPGs, but I can also appreciate the ways that generators and other forms of randomness can spur creativity as well.

Max: What do you think makes for a good generator?

Jones: Word choice above all else. If you don't use evocative language, you're sunk, it doesn't matter how complex the generator is, it'll feel completely inert. I had a lengthier answer here, but I kept on thinking out counterexamples to my own points, so I think that's what I'm left with. I guess to add one further dimension I'd say "not overly prescriptive, not overly vague" which is another way of saying "well written" but you see examples of both all the time; giving me a pile of common nouns doesn't stir any imagination, but neither does a fully realized paragraph; at that point you're just writing table entries.

Max: I do think there's a bit of a distinction there, and both are good points. The latter is more of a practicality, whereas the former is about using language evocatively. I mean, there is still a logistical level to it too, in that evocative language is, in effect, encoding a lot of information, and in a way that is aesthetically pleasing and memorable, all of which is good for a generator.

Jones: Yeah, that's definitely the case. I think that honestly the best thing anyone who likes writing generators and wants to improve can do is just read a bunch of poetry. Even if you don't have a literary background, you'll pick up on methods of weighting language with meaning and aesthetic appeal. I think the ttrpg scene has really criminally undersold how important good writing is to making good games/game tools.

Max: It's funny you mention poetry, I've recently developed an interest in it myself. And specifically, it was when I realized how much structure there is in poetry. That absolutely makes sense to me, although I hadn't considered this! There are at least a handful of indie/OSR/etc. creators I can think of who do prioritize writing, but I agree that it's undervalued. It's also really hard to do, and also hard to do on top of everything else that goes into a game. But even so, the value of it probably outweighs the effort more so than most people recognize.

Jones: Oh, I'd go further; I think it's probably the number one thing that's gonna make or break a game, particularly when it comes to landing new players. 100% (and I say this without exaggeration) of the players at my table went from being skeptical about ttrpgs to fully enthused based solely on the quality of the writing in the books and games I showed/ran for them

Max: There's something to be said for that, it's certainly something I've thought a lot about with my own works. I look back on some of my earlier blog posts, and there were some good ideas, and occasionally bits of decent writing, but some of it is pretty rough.

Max: What does good writing in TTRPGs look like to you? I don't necessarily mean to name specific books, but what kinds of styles or sensibilities? Maybe that's too abstract of a question...

Jones: I think that the old OSR adage of "evocative and brief" has some merit, but maximalist long form writing can definitely be equally effective (think Luka Rejec, or the Grand Commodore blog) Whatever you're doing, you're going to want to prioritize atmosphere, style, and clarity, in roughly that order. Reason being that in a work designed primarily to inspire play, the work had better be inspirational, and if the GM can read something, not necessarily be clear on the details, but capture enough of an atmosphere/sensibility/vibe to improvise their own, then that's a successful bit of writing. Clarity of course is relevant when it comes to things that it's crucial that all parties be on the same page about, but that's often the easiest part of the job to be honest. I think a lot of OSR creators in particular tend to go straight for "clarity by way of brevity" which both neglects atmosphere and style and often doesn't even achieve a useful clarity, because the kind of clarity offered by "6 by 6 room, barrel in the corner" is not a kind of clarity that informs the players about what it's like to be in that room, and that sense of the game space having real weight is in turn necessary to facilitate the kind of play that most OSR/Fiction First fans claim to prefer 

Max: This is a very interesting perspective, because ya, most OSR sensibilities I think would put clarity first, and are very much about minimalism. One critique I might place with this though, particularly as someone who tries very hard to create novel worlds that don't lean on genre or preconceived notions, is that the more so one does that, the more importance must be placed on clarity; or at least that's what I've generally thought, but you may very well be correct that sufficiently evocative language would supersede this, or rather, sufficiently evocative language is by definition sufficiently clear.

Jones: "sufficiently evocative language is by definition sufficiently clear" is a really nice succinct way of putting it, yeah. I think it's also a case of people emphasizing the wrong kinds of clarity; creating clarity about what a place feels like is going to be of the utmost importance in an activity wholly contained in the minds of you and your friends, but it doesn't get a lot of attention as a rule.

Max: "but it doesn't get a lot of attention as a rule." Do you mean that literally, as in it often is not represented in game rules, or did you mean that more so figuratively? I would be inclined to agree either way, but what do you do about that?

Jones: Both, I suppose. And I think it's mainly a matter of really bearing down on the actual writing of a given game (are these words the best possible words? Is this the best possible place to put them?), as well as acknowledging gamefeel, (a term I think coined by Jay Dragon?) which is essentially just the aesthetic experience offered by a particular mechanic: rolling a dice pool has different gamefeel than rolling a d20, etc.

Max: Well the latter example also changes the probabilities, which is a very different thing. I don't mean that pedantically, it's an important distinction, since what you're talking about is much more so qualitative than quantitative, or at least harder to operationalize quantitatively.

Jones: Hm, I see what you're saying but I actually disagree, not with the fact that the probabilities are altered of course, but that there's a way to neatly separate the aesthetic experience of a game from its mechanical experience. Going back to poetry, I'd say the actual mechanics of a game are akin to the formal elements of a poem, while the writing of a game is analogous to, well, the writing of the poem. In other words; they alter how you consume the writing, the order in which you consume it, the context in which you place it, etc. I also think that this is honestly just not something a lot of people are conscious of in their own games. A lot of people would benefit from sitting down and thinking about what aesthetic experience they are trying to capture at the table, rather than how best to express the physical rules of their imaginary world

Max: Good points on both counts, and I definitely agree about the focus on rules vs. expression. It seems like, at least in my circles, most people are really focused on either the meta/theory-level of tabletop RPGs, or on PbtA- or storygame-style mechanics-as-expression mentality. And as you eloquently put, rules and writing are interactive. Even so, I see few people prioritizing worldbuilding or writing per se in discussion or design of TTRPGs nowadays.

Jones: I agree, and it's really a shame, especially when most of what comes of the "mechanics as expression" discussion is "we came up with another way to do ptba moves"

Max: I agree, but to be clear, I'm not trying to hate on PbtA or anything, in fact one of my favorite recent game releases was a PbtA game. But still, as I know you are aware, this is something I'm also passionate about and trying to bring back in some capacity; a place for worldbuilding and written expression.

Jones: Oh me neither; I have no particular love for PbtA, but I think it's a really good collection of good common sense practices for many games. I think part of the issue is that it's really rare that you see people truly innovating mechanically (and it's always obvious when they do, because it's always entirely out of left field), but that a lot of people insist on foregrounding their rules even when their rules are like, yet another way to make hitpoints more realistic or something. And ironically, the games with some of the most  innovative rules structures I've ever read are the ones that place primary emphasis on tone and atmosphere. I've been rereading Polaris, and its structured argument resolution system been blowing my mind, but that's like, the last thing the book cares about you paying attention to. 

Max: I tried to be conscientious of exactly these kinds of things when I was designing MRD- I understand how one can so easily lose sight of this, but I agree that at this point, I really don't care about mechanical "innovation" unless what I'm seeing actually has some degree of intentionality. As you're saying, it's the mechanics or game innovations that are most rooted in expressing some unique or well executed tone or atmosphere that I am most likely to find compelling.

Max: We're running up on time but I really enjoyed this conversation. In addition to any final thoughts on this topic, is there anything else you want to talk about before we wrap up?

Jones: I've enjoyed this conversation a lot too! It's a nice way to sort out and make explicit some of my own beliefs that just ambiently inform my design. And I guess I'd just ask if you think this emphasis on "good writing" in games is potentially exclusionary/elitist? I've been criticized for that before, though for my money I think it's largely an empty critique: the ideas that a well written poem is better than a poorly written one, and that asking someone to purchase a poorly written poem is a bit of a fools errand, aren't particularly controversial, but we seem to violently drop our standards for written games and modules. Either way though, I'd be curious to hear where you stand.

Max: There is an extent to which what counts as "good writing" is subjective or may be elitist, and I think that's an inherent complication in things that can't be quantified and measured (that's not to say that quantitative fields don't have bias lol, but those same methods are how one would systematically identify bias- it's about methods, not institutions, but this is all a very long aside). That being said, in both game design and poetry, there is some degree of structure, and certain principles work better than others, and one who understands and leverages them will systematically outperform someone who does not, regardless even if they consciously understand what they're doing, although being educated per se (independent of being certified per se- as in having a degree of some sort) presumably helps. So that's maybe a longwinded way of saying I agree with you- not that there isn't room for debate or a need for further operationalization, but principally I agree. But anyway, this was a lot of fun, thanks for your time!

Jones: Back atcha, always a good time talkin shop with you.

Meandering Thoughts About Combat

I mentioned recently how I was feeling creatively empty, which gave me a bit of a creative burst, but I appear to have run out of steam and can't seem to finish my Martians setting even though I have a bestiary post already 75% drafted and would like to make some Martian Mechs for TNT by way of Mechs & Monstrosities and Gamma Knights. But that probably won't happen unless I will it to happen by mentioning it here.

On a theory level, I've been thinking about combat in tabletop RPGs, and how to handle it. While I actually do find character builds and tactical combat in games like D&D 3.+ compelling when I've done a sufficient amount of research into them, I prefer that style of play in videogames, not tabletop. I've come to respect that style of game design a bit more again. By integrating all of the mechanics together, a relatively crunchy game can be made much more streamlined (as opposed to many of the overly complex bolt-on mechanics of D&D 2e and other games from that era, see Star Frontiers Advanced which I should but probably won't write a review of bc tbh I was a little disappointed that my Gamma Knights review didn't make it on the thought eater humpday blogarama). However, it also becomes much less modular, so unless you want to redesign the whole game any time you want to hack something, you're pretty much stuck with what you've got. Which is great if you lack the time, creativity, or general inclination to make stuff yourself. But at that point, I'd rather just play a videogame.

Anyway, that was an unintended tangent, this is a bit stream of consciousness. I've been thinking about this stuff because of games like TNT and Gamma Knights. I don't necessarily prefer opposed rolls to hit vs. armor type combat systems, but I do find them interesting, and I wish more OSR people would look to TNT for inspiration even if they aren't interested in switching systems. I like how in TNT ranged weapons have fewer damage dice but can bypass the opposed roll, or how rolling a six on any damage die gives 1 spite damage that also bypasses opposed rolls, such that a sufficient number of weak monsters can still make a mark on player characters, without necessarily being an hyper-deadly game. Likewise, while I generally don't like character builds and tactical crunch in tabletop, I do like the idea of that being a differentiation between regular PCs and mechs or power armored PCs. If I were playing a whole mech game I wouldn't bother, I'd just reskin any other game, but there is something kind of appealing to me that I can't fully articulate about the different sensors and power management and force fields and computerized systems in Gamma Knights (or maybe it's more generally related to the point I will be making below, which is supposed to be the main point of this meandering post).

That being said, in practice, I almost always prefer to minimize combat, or add saving rolls or other non-combat mechanics into combat scenarios. I don't find GMing combat fun, I only kind of find being a PC in combat fun, if the GM did a good job setting up the encounter, and anecdotally, I find that a lot of the fun leaves the table when things get too solely combat-driven. It could just be that I'm not a good combat GM. Or it could be that good combat encounters should include non-combat actions, and I'm doing it correctly after all.

While I haven't played it, I find the Pyrrhic Weaselry, Or At What Cost? system so intriguing because it's willing to defy the norm of combat systems in an otherwise D&D-style game space, and is really conscientious of fictional positioning and how to leverage that to create interesting encounters. I think the term fictional positioning gets thrown around a lot by storygame people, but frankly I've found that many of the people who sling that term around don't really understand what it means, or haven't thought it through all the way, just making common sense needlessly pretentious (this statement is not intended as an attack on all storygamers or all storygames! I'm not one of those obnoxious anti-storygame people! In fact there are many things I like about FATE and PbtA!). Anyway, If you really want to understand what fictional positioning means, read Pyrrhic Weaselry (we've had some good conversations about it on the underutilized SWORDDREAM_unofficial subreddit). I do genuinely think FATE and PbtA do good fictional positioning as well, and also deserve credit for abstracting away combat as not fundamentally different from other mechanics; it's more that I think other people sometimes reduce it to something less meaningful.

Despite all of what I just said, the idea of a combat-less system just seems... wrong. I want a combat system! I don't care that I generally don't like it, or that my players generally don't like it, or that I usually try to minimize its use as much as possible, I still want it there! In small doses it's nice. Just knowing it's there adds to the experience. Maybe that's crazy, but such is life.

That got me thinking though, while there are certain things I don't like about FATE, one thing I really do like about FATE is how it re-constructs tactical combat in a way that doesn't remove combat mechanics altogether, but abstracts them into different kinds of actions that play into the fictional positioning system (aspects). Skills can be designed flexibly for any setting, and can be used as either an attack, defense, to overcome an obstacle, or one other thing that I'm forgetting off-hand because I haven't played it in a while and also I may be getting some of this terminology wrong. That in tandem with the two kinds of stress tracks (one more physical, one more mental, I think called Will) and the ease with which one could hack in more stress tracks, allows you to have your cake and eat it to when it comes to tactical combat vs. fictional positioning. I actually think it's a shame how FATE has to some extent become a victim of its own success, because personally I think FATE is much more interesting, flexible, and DIY than PbtA, which I think has become (or by its nature is) really just the D&D of storygames (for better and worse), but that's also post for another day (I should really be keeping track of these tangents...).

So I don't have a concrete idea at the moment, but I'd like to think about how to, rather than remove combat altogether in games like TNT and OSR, abstract it across other mechanics or situations in ways that are both tactically and fictionally interesting. How could one bend combat to social conflict, or fire fighting, or ghost hunting with a proton pack, or to cooking a dish / line cooking as a team during the dinner rush? I suspect creating a FATE bolt-on to TNT or OSR, or a TNT or OSR-inspired hack of FATE, will play a part in this, but I don't want to commit to anything yet.

I've created TNT character types such as the War Dogs or Warlord that add more fictional-positioning Saving Rolls to combat, but I'd like to maybe try coming up with some character types or general mechanics that go the other way, adding combat-like mechanics to scenarios that are not combat per se. The idea isn't so much to increase the overall amount of combat, but to smooth out the delineation between combat encounters and everything else.

Fitting for this post, I'm going to end on yet another tangent that is dubiously related to the intended point of this post. I've also been thinking about a Poker combat-type mechanic for TNT, inspired partially by the poker mechanics in Deadlands. Because of how TNT uses D6s, I think TNT lends itself better to this kind of mechanic than OSR, but there's no reason why it couldn't also be bolted on to OSR. But again, that's a post for another day...