Jojiro's Orthodoxies of Narration

I don´t have to explain what´s happening here. You´re not the boss of me.

Some noise is coming from a building.

-A tired Game Master somewhere, probably

1. Rewrite this, still as a single sentence. You want to convey that the structure is not sound. You hear the sound of rotting timbers wetly creaking from inside a poorly-mortared stone hovel beside you.
2. Rewrite this, still as a single sentence. You want players to picture a safe haven, a feeling of comfort that we get with freshly baked cookies at grandma’s house. But do it implicitly – “Grandma’s baking noise is coming from the safe haven” is not the point of the exercise, here. The sound of gently hissing fire meets your ears from the abode beside you, a familiar crackle.
3. Rewrite this, still as a single sentence. You want to convey that this location is mildly dangerous. As you hear the sound of gentle scurrying and scratching coming from the building beside you, you get the nagging feeling that you're being watched.
4. Rewrite this, no sentence limit. You want to convey that this location is lethally dangerous – try to suggest a different type of danger than what you used for exercise #3. As you hurry past, a sickening noise causes you to stop in your tracks- a scream caught in a throat, before the wet sound of steel cleaving flesh and meeting bone. A deep, infernal laugh rises from an inhuman throat as the unseen blade is forcibly removed from the victim, then as the chuckling subsides, the sound of rusted blade on grindstone. Something terribly unpleasant is happening.

5. The dungeon entrance is kinda big even to the humans in the party, but it positively looms over the halflings, like a bloated elephant. There’s even trumpeting and general cacophany to match! It’s a right circus in there. There seems to be an emphasis on the feeling of grandeur and an attempt to create a lighthearted tone, though I need a lot more context to make sense of how a dungeon could be circus-like; is it some form of literal funhouse?

6. As you round the bend, Martha, you hear the crackling of flame and popping of glass. The upstairs window that you spent much of your childhood daydreaming from bulges outward and shatters with a resounding crash, and the stoop where your mother always stood in the evening to greet your father groans as it folds in on itself. Mercerian levels of backstory are being engaged here, with an attempt in eliciting an emotional reaction from a single character. Fairy-tale nostalgia weaponized, to what could potentially be a very powerful effect at the table.

7. The floorboards creak and groan despite the party’s best efforts to stay stealthy. The incessant scuttling sound continues too. First in the wall. Then in the ceiling. Then down another wall, and finally to the floor beneath your feet. Cackling follows the scuttling, half a beat delayed. Dread, suspense, a folkloric horror. Scuttling is associated with natural creatures, particularly insects, and when melded with cackling definitely implies witchery. Plus the party is already being stealthy, so the strong implication is trying to stay out of the sight of a powerful witch, and failing.

A person hits a person.”

-That same tired Game Master, probably

8. Rewrite this, no sentence limit. The focus should be on a specific body part, the texture is meant to be visceral. You’re drawing out a moment and making the hit meaty and with impact. His fist soars, almost slow motion, down through the air. You watch as it collides with your lower abdomen, an instant ache blooming through your solar plexus. You stagger backwards, the wind knocked out of you for half a second as you struggle to regain breath and composure. He cracks his knuckles after such a direct hit, a sadistic grin exploding across his face.
9. Rewrite this, no sentence limit. The focus is on the person who hits, not the person who is being hit. The texture is something personal to the person who hits – you’re framing this as an important moment for them as a character. Your knuckles white, you take a steadying breath as you stare into those steel blue eyes that have haunted you for so long. In one instant, your body uncurls and springs into action, like a spring being released, and you strike forward with lightning precision and a well of determination. Your fist soars, colliding with his temple. You barely register the force of the impact as adrenaline courses through your body, and as he reels back from the blow, you take a moment to shake the pain out of your hand. You´ve been wanting to hurt him back like that for a while, and damn does it feel good.
10. Rewrite this, no sentence limit. The focus is on the scenery, and the texture is one of bleakness. Whatever combat is happening is ultimately pointless, and you’re trying to make sure the party knows it. Zoom out, make the fight less personalized, less meaningful. Distance your description. As your fists rain down blow after blow, pummeling her into the dirt, her dazed and empty smile directed almost past you, though you, mocks you. Dead silence fills your ears as you continue your senseless assault, your sinews losing their adrenaline and screaming in protest. (This one was tough for me, and I don´t think I did a great job, because I need more context.)
11. Rewrite this, no sentence limit. The focus is on conveying facts. There should be as little texture as possible. It’s the end of the session, everyone is tired, and while making this accurate is important, making it anything more would be a waste of time. You can see one of your players is already half-asleep. You may want to rush this and call it a night. Your blow connects solidly, and they grunt in pain. Alrighty, who´s next?
12. Rewrite this, no sentence limit. You are trying to focus on a pathetic target of the hit, but not like, an assault victim or anything serious. Tonally you’re aiming for a slapstick character who is the butt of jokes, bad timing, and who keeps getting beat on. This blow, which for most people would be considered but a light tap, sends this guy on his ass. As he goes to stand back up, you try and help him to his feet, but he slips out of your grasp and falls back the other way. You can´t help but suppress a chuckle.

I think the most significant thing I got out of this round is how much description relies on context. You build off of ideas you´ve previously presented, you frame descriptions in the same sorts of metaphors and highlight the same sorts of details, you slowly give sensory information over time instead of loading it all in at once. There´s a strange sort of poetry you can weave that you can´t convey with a three-sentence chunk of narration.

The "One Book" Principle

     I begin this post with a claim: RPGs are an oral tradition. When you've got a group of total neophytes, you don't want to make them read through your ruleset of choice before the game like homework. You want to get them to the table and rolling dice and having fun as fast and without hassle as possible. Since the game is a conversation, why is the initial experience not structured like one?

     My second postulate, then, is that a book's purpose is to convey the rules in the absence of a teacher. The RPG book exists so that play can be had in a similar manner with a totally different group of people. Again, I think this is a fair claim. It gets dicey in terms of splatbooks full of character abilities, but I'll address those later.

     The third postulate is that RPGs should contain minimum unwanted hassle. Some hassle is wanted. For example, rolling a d20 and adding modifiers is a hassle. Rolling damage on a successful attack is a hassle. Having a list of equipment or spells is a hassle. All of these things are integral components of many games, necessary to make the gameplay engaging. But wherever corners can be cut and not diminish overall fun/desired aesthetic, I argue they should be.

     My fifth postulate, in summation, is thus: A good game system should only need one player at the table to have possessed and read one book and still have a good experience throughout. 5e fails miserably, ICRPG almost passes save character creation, Dungeon World is pretty damn good. When you design your RPG, think about someone trying to verbally walk an RPG neophyte through every process and procedure, including character creation, because that's usually how you'll be doing it.

Stealthposting because these are probably obvious to a lot of people, and not terribly interesting, but I wanted to put it out there so I can reference it later. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

A brief interruption to post my progress on MARROW

 We interrupt this regularly scheduled GLoGtober content (it was a dodgy day anyway, I'm gonna come back swinging tomorrow, I promise) to being an updated version of the MARROW rules and Classes. Most of the mechanics have stayed the same with some tweaks, and a whole boatload of Classes has been added. I'm doing a dungeon with my weekly group now, and after I get all that data and make the necessary tweaks to the core system, I'll start adding in my extraneous rules, like potions as drugs and my DW DM tools and all these bad boys. In the meantime, though, the rules and Classes.

CORE RULES

MASTER CLASS DOC

    This post, for now, will be the hub of my MARROW developments. Any rules additions will find their way here, and anybody in my games can find this page as a jumping off point for referencing in-game.

    That said, I'm working on some projects in the background, including some ideas about a fun MARROW hack with a streamlined, Into the Odd-like character generation system and minimal rules, and some really ambitious GLoGtober posts.

    GLoGtober tomorrow will be big- a massive step towards me prepping my Rime of the Frostmaiden game, my massive random encounter and quest tables designed to randomize as much of the experience as I can. Look forward to having a large list of encounters to mine, and some food for thought in terms of structuring tables for versatile use. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming.

What people tend to like

    I reached out on the OSR Discord server, asking what types of blog posts people enjoyed seeing. I collected a modest number of results, and here are some of my findings. This post isn't intended as a way to try and get blogs more traffic for its own sake, but with the intent of trying to consolidate what people want so you can make content people will see, find useful, use, spin off of, and all those lovely things. After all, shouting to the void is fun, but shouting with friends is better!

-There's a market for dungeons, puzzles, and their design/construction. No surprise there, as for the vast majority of people, that is the core of their gameplay.

-Monsters are always welcome, as is setting info. In terms f setting info, discrete things on the micro scale seem best. What are the coins like? The meals? The houses? The customs?

-There's always a place for heady game analysis and GM tips. In particular on these fronts, I heard calls for social justice analysis of tropes/monsters and ways to lessen GM prep (which seems oxymoronic to me, "hey, let me spend my time trolling the internet to find a DnD blog to tell me how to spend less time on DnD", but it is as it is)

-Surreal and world-grounded classes that are unique and have tight, elegant mechanics seem to be the most gooderest, but even checking a couple of those buttons should result in a class people love

-People like feedback from playtests, be they your own stuff or someone else's

-I've found that reacting to other posts, building something off another's foundation, or participating in a community challenge gets a lot more traffic, and feels fun to boot

-Worldbuilding, new mechanics, and classes are best combined and conjoined. It's great to have a class that build the world, and a mechanic that insinuates some aspect of the character's realities.

That's what I heard, but I'd love to hear your thoughts! What are your favorite posts to read? Which of your posts have gotten the most traffic, and why is that? Tell me in the comments below!

Fire and Life and Magic

Fire and life are linked, in an intrinsic and peculiar way. Fire is life, shimmering and dancing and vibrant and energetic, but ultimately destined to peter out and grow cold. Fire grows and spreads and dies. Life destroys and creates entropy. But the connections grow deeper than that.

The Elemental Plane of Fire is said to be the crucible of souls. When a soul needs to be drawn out of the ether to be breathed again into a new life, it passes through the Plane of Fire to be scorched anew into a Tabula Rasa. Or perhaps Charon, ferrier of the souls, likes to warm himself by the fire before delivering new life into the flesh. Either way, superstitious locals always hold a bonfire before a birth, to avoid miscarriage and strife, and somehow it always seems to work, and it always seems to fail when left undone.

Fire is magic. Magic burns away at a person’s mind, a person’s body, a person’s soul, a person’s fire. It consumes, bit by bit, with each destructive and powerful use, a barely contained chaos. Magic is a background energy, like heat. It is constantly present in some form, as reality itself is incompatible with a void of magic. Magic made manifest into effects or Spells or objects is pulled from this background, these ley lines, fashioned and shaped like molten-hot metal into the cast of conceptual understanding.

Souls are magic. When the Kin die, their souls proceed to afterlives into forms like ghosts, devils, celestials, and petitioners. When those die, they are said to fade into the ley lines, becoming part of the magical background energy of the cosmos. New souls are ripped from this background and purified through fire. New fire is conjured from magic and ends the cycle of life. Life spawns and shapes magic, creating fire.

Golems are creatures between things… they are powered with and by fire, they mimic life, and they are born from and breathe magic. Which are they? Which are they not? Which in them are one and the same?

Magic and fire and life. They are different, and yet they are one.

Make a Game

Find a game you really like, one that every time you flip through it fires a different creative neuron. Could be OG GLoG, could be a GLoG hack (for me it was the wonderful BONES), could be something like LotFP or DCC, hell, could even be DnD 4e.

Go through that game closely. Take notes on specifically what you like and why you like it. Take notes on what you don’t like and why you don’t like it. Figure it out, get an intimate knowledge of what it is and what caught your attention. Perhaps play it (though if you’re an experienced DM/mechanics wonk, this may not be necessary).

Take the system and rip it apart. Take out every little chunk that annoys you, that you don’t like. Treat the game book like a broken watch. Salvage the good parts, replace or refurbish the bad parts, perhaps with parts from other watches. Make the game you’d most like to play. Make the game whose philosophies fir your DMing style.

IT’S OKAY IF THAT CHANGES OVER TIME. It’s okay if there’s no “canonical version” of your new rules, it’s okay if it changes every campaign, or every month, or even every session. It’s okay to have multiple hacked games going on at once, to have many projects and many styles and many frontiers of exploration. Go and play.

When all that strange warping is done (but it’s never really done, is it?), you’ll have something of your very own. Maybe it’s not a full game, maybe it’s three full games, maybe it’s something so unique that it can only exist in you and your player’s minds, but that’s YOUR SPECIAL THING. That’s a type of RPG magic you can make sitting in a room by yourself. That’s something to treasure, to always be working on, a masterpiece in motion.

Is it a GLoG hack? Probably not. GLoG is a very specific genre, honestly speaking. When many people say GLoG hack, they’re using a shorthand for “hey, this magical little game thing I made is vaguely compatible with similar other magical little game things on (insert grounds here)”. GLoG hacks aren’t a genre, they’re a shared language you can pull from. Just like 5e class options and archetypes are a shared language you can pull from. Just like generic, fluff and lore based game ideas are a shared language you can pull from. Your thing cannot, by definition, be defined by something else. What languages and resources you choose to make vaguely compatible with are entirely up to you. Don’t feel restricted to calling your thing a “GLoG hack” if that’s not a title you like. Hunt around or make one that you do like.

Play around. Make something. Inspire someone. Contribute something new. Mash things together. Think about your game. Allow things to happen organically, but don’t be afraid to throw a wrench in the bicycle tires. Don’t be afraid to make it vague or mechanically incomplete. (“You turn into a creature of metal and bone” is enough. Figure out the rest at the table.) Start simple and flower outward, or start big and work your way in.

Make a game. Make it yours. That is the spirit at the core of GLoG, and SWORD DREAM, and FLAILSNAILS, and OSR, and RPGs, and life. Defy labels. Make something. It will be phenomenal, I promise.

Relevant LINKS throughout this sentence, most of which are GLoG-geared, but don't feel compelled to hop into the Cult of GLoG if it ain't your jam. Also, here are BONES and MARROW for reference.

Have fun storming the castle.

Vecna

He smiled, exposing teeth yellowed from years of incarceration. A million times, going over the phrases, the gestures, the twitches of his gnarled hands and mutterings of his wrinkled mouth he would need in painstakingly precise measure. Runes scored the ground around him, some scratched in by his browned and cracked nails, some scribed by his captors, magically binding him. He gave yet another experimental tug on the fetters that bound his hands, halfheartedly hoping that after years… no, decades, as death was not an escape he had the luxury of in this oubliette, the chain might finally come undone. But alas, it held firm in its mithril socket, imperiously mocking him from upon the spiral-mosaiced wall.

He thought back. Himself, dressed in flowing robes of grey and brilliant blue and shimmering white. Standing atop a cliff, on a stone podium, feeling the spray of sea salt in his tousled half-elvish hair. Throwing his arms wide as he emphatically and didactically preached of the sublime divinity of the flesh to the mass crowded in front of him, drinking every word like a fine elvish wine. Running his heterochromatic blue-green eyes over the invigorated, youthful faces in front of him, chanting his name, asking for him, goading him to lecture further on his vision of the Kin ascending to the heavens and slaughtering the old gods.

Not yet. Dry, cracked lips rustled out like whispering bellows squeaking into a dwindling fire. It had been a very long time since he had heard his own voice. The feeling was strange, almost otherworldly, in the crypt-like silence of his subterranean cell. It reverbreasted against the lead-reinforced marble, sending tremors through the inky darkness. He rehearsed every gesture, every word, every moment in his mind again. He repeated them over and over again. It must have taken hours. He did not know. Hours meant nothing to him. He had nothing but time, and discipline. Three more rehearsals and he would indulge in recollection. Two more rehearsals. One.

Seated placidly on the patio of the veranda, looking outwards towards Lunus. At his side were three of his practically effervescent attendants, feeding him fruits and rubbing his muscles with oil as his piercing mismatched eyes scoured the heavens, as if looking for some secret. The notes were almost done, the research nearly finished, the ritual nearly complete. His apotheosis was imminent. Damn the Iron Treatise, damn it to Inferno, he would raze the heavens from inside out. The mockery of the gods would be no more. The Age of Kings would fade into the Age of Flesh Made God, and his ascension to divinity would be the piece de resistance. The world would tremble as it never had before.

They would cry my name. One more rehearsal, two more rehearsals, three more rehearsals. The darkness was as deafening as the silence was obfuscating. He shifted, his worn muscles creaking in protest as the chains on his limbs rattled their overbearing retort. Years of agony. Years of agony. Years of agony.

He once stood on the circle. The claret warmed the pads of his feet as he strode to the center, careful to avoid the littered corpses of the unworthy in his path like necrotic debris. His most loyal attendants, no, cultists, stood about, feasting on the flesh and chanting vile words from the text he assembled for them. He smiled gazing upwards one last time to the stars above. Soon he would join them, up above in their sacrosanct courts, and he would profane their halls with their blood as he profaned this hall with the blood of the Kin…

He winced, remembering the swords that cut into his flesh that night, the scars still burning in his body, an eternal reminder of how close he was to his prize. His attendants slaughtered, his precious Book of Vile Darkness locked away, him led away in chains to the deepest dungeon he could be kept in, he and his disciples declared a travesty against the laws of the universe. Years… no, decades of this unending darkness. Had it been centuries? Had it?

He knew. There was a time for everything. When the time is right, they will weep, kiss his feet, worship him as the ionoclast he knew he was. He would make them say his name.

I am the flesh made god.

I am the one who will slaughter the heavens.

I am the half-breed, the mongrel.

I am both, and I am none, and I am greater.

This is who I am.

Vecna.

Waxing Poetic for the Lethargically Inclined

Metaphor: Comparing two things that are essentially unlike

The voice was like sandpaper against a rainy day.

The goblin’s teeth are like the smell of sulphur and sweat and rot fighting for supremacy.

What does the mushroom want? Listen to the waves crashing against the black shore and you will know.

The lightning rumbled like copper blood against the bruised sky.

Add some fake prosaic bullshit to your game by confusing your senses a little bit. Your players and readers will think you some poetic genius, while you know that all you’re doing is getting very confused halfway through a sentence intentionally.