Concept of Play, or “What Kind of Game is SoP Anyway?” (Patreon)

For my first post on the Spheres of Power RPG and what is different about it, I wanted to be a little bit higher-level. Discussions of death mechanics and ability scores are all well and good, but before we can get into the weeds we need to know the answer to the question: What type of game is this system for, anyway? 

People who’ve done play testing for systems before or have engaged in a lot of online discourse comparing various editions and versions of the game are probably familiar with the idea that Dungeons and Dragons and its spinoffs (Pathfinder and the like) sit at the intersection of two different styles of game styles: narrative gaming, where the purpose is to tell a story, and war gaming, where you try to beat your opponent with tactical play. This goes all the way back to basic D&D, which was built out of the game Chainmail, and has continued ever since to the newest 5.5 rules.

A lot of new games pick a side, at least to lean into. Daggerheart leans more towards being a narrative game, while Draw Steel (at least from what I’ve seen of it) is more of a war game. 

So which one is Spheres of Power? Well…

One of the biggest innovations of the original Spheres of Power for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game was letting you build characters in a concept-based way. When I think about Spheres of Power the TTRPG, what I want most is to apply that same concept-based approach to how you play the game, not just how you build the setting and the PCs. A rules-heavy war game might have epic fights, but often constrains you to only doing what the developers have thought of as options. A rules-light narrative game might have room to let you say “I backflip over the enemy’s head and stick my sword into his arm!” but if the choice to backflip and the choice to attack their arm doesn’t mean anything mechanically, then how is it affecting the story?

For Spheres of Power, the vision we’re working with is a system that allows you to have creative freedom to do what you want to do and tell the story you want to tell, and then see each of those decisions reflected in the actual game and mechanics you’re using. In essence, if role-play at its heart is a giant game of make-believe with rules, then the rules need to support that make-believe, not fight against it.

How do we do this? Well, we’ll have more posts coming that will go into the actual mechanics and how we think they support this vision, but the TLDR version is that A. Making rules that adapt to and reward creative decision-making, and B. Flow naturally from just sitting around and talking. If you start the scene with improvised theater, getting the rules involved shouldn’t derail the creativity, it should enhance it. How well do we succeed at these goals? Well, take a look for yourself and let us know!