Writing a ttRPG - Wyverns & Warrens (Pt. 11 - What Is A Roleplaying Game... and How Do I Design For That?") (Patreon)

(This article is not part of the content of this blog's that is covered by the OGL 1.0a.)

I'm designing Wyverns & Warrens (WyvWar), an effort at a short, easy-to-learn, easy-to-play, fast-playing fantasy ttRPG that still has a depth of options. And I am doing that in weekly installments, exclusively for my paying Patrons!

You can check out the earlier articles at the links below.

First Look - Wyverns & Warrens Fantasy ttRPGPreview 01 - When Are Hit Points Not Hit Points?Preview 02 - Paths & EdgesPt. 1 Writing and RPG (How We Got Here)Pt 2. First Outline DraftPt. 3 - Core Mechanic, Attacks, and DamagePt. 4 - Target NumbersPt. 5 - Damage and BenchmarksPt. 6 - Time, Space, Scale, Distance, Movement, and RangePt. 7 - What Defines A Character, First Draft: AttributesPt. 8 - Hero McHeroFacePt. 9 - A Framework for MagicPt. 10 - Enough to Start Writing

One of my personal truisms is "We can't be sure we'll hit all our design goals, but if we don't know what our design goals are, we can't even aim at them." I consider design goals an important part of any game writing process, and I want to loop back and remind myself of them throughout a design process. It's okay to change design goals. Heck, it's even okay to miss design goals you never changed. Things happen. What is NOT okay in mind is to forget what your design goals were.

I want Wyverns & Warrens to be a specific type of tabletop Roleplaying Game. Which means I need to answer the question -- what is a Roleplaying Game? To some folks, any time you take on personas while playing a game, it's an RPG. They may be right as players, but that makes chess an RPG if you play out the deaths of each pawn and stalwart leap of each knight's move. Maybe players can force chess to be an RPG, but to me it's certainly not one as presented.

Other learned and experienced RPG pundits state something is only an RPG if it's got rules directly tied to roleplaying. By that definition, many editions of D&D aren't RPGs. And there are absolutely pundits who agree with that. They feel most version of D&D are tactical scale wargames with a strong referee role, and people injecting roleplaying into them, are doing the same thing as injecting roleplaying into chess. I can understand their point, but I don't agree with it.

In general, I consider a true tabletop roleplaying game to be a game in which the goal of the game design is that anything a player's character could reasonably attempt the game allows them to attempt. That doesn't mean every possible action has a specific rule for it -- that's both impossible and a guarantee that either your rules are going to be a massive clutter or some of the rules are going to be bad matches for their specific tasks, or both. But it does mean that unlike Monopoly (a terrible game, but one lots of people know the rules for and thus a good game for examples), you aren't limited to just a small set of possible actions. Real Estate: The Capitalisting might not have explicit rules for investing in the stock market, or trying to focus on low-cost housing, or burning a slumlord's hotel to the ground, but for me to count it as a ttRPG the base assumption of the game must include that if you think of those things, you can try them.

Of course, every game has to live with trade-offs, and a specific focus on a theme or style of play can absolutely be among those. Real Estate: The Capitalisting might not have any better rules for starting a religious cult than Monopoly does. (LOTS of ttRPGs don't have great rules for starting religious cults.) But conceptually, Monopoly assumes no one can, under any circumstances, take actions in the game outside those that are specifically allowed. A ttRPG (IMHO) is built on the idea that whatever a player can think of that fits their chosen role can at least be attempted.

So, what does Wyverns & Warrens lack, that my definition requires? Honestly, the main thing I am missing is strong advice to the GM (game moderator) on how to handle players wanting their PCs to do things there are aren't explicit rules for. And to give such advice, I need to build the game system to support it. Looking at a lot of ttRPGs I grew up on in the mid 1980s, it's fairly common for them to have very concrete rules for basic combat actions, no advice for combat maneuvers beyond those, and a moderate set of skills with broad definitions and little solid mechanics. The drawback of that kind of skill system is that a player is very much at the mercy of the GM on whether something can be accomplished with those skills. If you have a Survival skill, does it include orienteering? Making crude weapons from rocks and sticks? Tracking prey? Skinning and tanning hides?

A lot of that can be solved by writing skill definitions in a way that makes it clear how broadly they should be interpreted. Even then players are at the mercy of the GM's interpretation of those definitions, but ultimately in most RPGs players ARE at the mercy of the GM. My goal is not to create a game that can't be subverted by a malicious GM, but one that gives a GM who wants to lead players through an exciting and interesting game session the tools to do so... and maybe, if possible, make it easier for inexperienced GMs to learn how to be better at that task of shepherding PCs through a dangerous world in a way that's fun,

Of course, that only fixes skills (unless skills cover everything in the game). A similar option for trying things in combat, trying things when exploring, trying things in social interactions and so on makes for a flexible game, but potentially one where players don't feel like they know what the numbers on their character sheet mean. So, I have a Demeanor value of +4... is that good? Bad? Great? If I want to distract the guard so my friends can sneak past him, how likely am I to succeed at that task?

For Wyverns & Warriors, I'm going to try to make this work by having broad skills, both pre-defined and choose-your-own specializations, concrete numbers toed to levels of difficulty that themselves have vague definitions but plenty of examples. I also want to explicitly set out how the game expects a GM to convey difficulty to a player. In general, if a character is aware of all the factors influencing an effort to do something, the GM should give the player the exact Target # needed for success.

("What's the Target Number to row the boat away from the dragon using just one arm, so I can keep my sword in my other hand?" "That would be nearly impossible." "Ah-ha. So, it IS possible!" Art (c) Dean Spencer, used under license.)

If a player says they want their character to throw a loop of rope over the top branch of a tree, and there's nothing secret or unexpected going on, the game expects the GM to tell the player what the Target # for success is. When there are clearly unknown factors, the GM may tell the player what the Target # would be for typical examples of those variables. So, if a player wants to know the Target # to distract a guard, but doesn't know that guard personally, the GM can say "For a typical guard, on duty, the Target Number to distract them for a round is 11, and it goes up by 2 for every step up the time chart you want to keep them distracted." We can add a mechanic where the GM can randomly increase or decrease such a Target # by 2 to factor in if this is a particularly alert, or slack, guard without having to make that decision by fiat in every case.

This kind of system DOES put a lot of trust in the hands of the GM and players to not abuse it. That doesn't appeal to everyone, and that's okay. It does appeal to me, for THIS project, and the feel I am going for. And, hopefully, it'll reinforce WyvWar as a true Roleplaying Game, where players know they can attempt anything reasonable-sounding, without the rules holding them back.

With that settled, as least as a goal, that just leaves me one element to address before I begin writing what I hope to be the complete first draft: what kind of setting am I putting in the first rulebook. I'll discuss that next week, in Part 12: An Assumed Setting.