Years back our group found Fellowship, the best PbtA game we've played before or since. We played it a bunch and had a lot of fun with how versatile of a framework it provides. We used it for Star Wars, Transformers, Exalted and heck, even Warhammer 40k. Which is why it was a surpsise for us to hear some people bounce from it because it was "just generic fantasy" and not looking past the genre box they put the game in to see what it is trying to do underneath the surface.
But since we have a good deal of experience reflavouring RPGs to suit what we need, let's talk about the issue more broadly! Let's talk about how you can look past the game's exterior and possibly have more fun tailoring the game to your needs!
When an Elf is not an Elf - Fellowship's Playbooks
The main way Fellowship seems to have lead people astray is with some of its names. The game itself brings to mind the Fellowship of the Ring book, and if you look at its Playbooks you see such fantasy staples as Elf, Dwarf, Halfling, Orc, etc. You glance at the surface and think to yourself "yup, this sure is a generic fantasy game drawing from everyone's first fantasy book inspiration" and if you're not in the mood for playing fantasy you move on. But the looks can be deceiving!
So for example, let's look at the Elf Playbook. Here is most of what it can do:
The Elven Core Moves is the baseline for the Playbook - the Elf can use magic to hide, see well, sense magic and send messages. It also can move without leaving a trail. The Elven Custom Moves further enhance these abilities and also gives them an option to be a performer.
On the surface it's pretty Tolkien-esque elf stuff. Wield a bow, climb some trees, attack unseen, etc. But we need to look past what the flavour and theming of the mechanics is and look at what you can actually do with this mechanical set!
Because you see, with the same set of mechanics you are not only describing Legolas, but also Solid Snake, the Predator and the hecking Batman. Any character that focuses on stealth and ranged attacks can easily slot into this Playbook. If you need to add some other character-specific doodad like Batman's wealth or gadgets you can do so with the Half-Elf Custom.
Sure looks like an Elf, even has pointy ears!
The same treatment can be applied to all the other Playbooks. Dwarves are characters that are tough and into clearing a path forward (like, say, a footbal quarterback), Halflings are sneaky tricksters that like fighting big things (like Antman), Orcs are people that fight with whatever they can kitbash together (like a LEGO Master Builder).
Heck, grab the right expansion and Playbooks for Fellowship and you can just straight up play Star Trek with it...
But this idea of reflavouring mechanics and character concepts doesn't just apply to games like Fellowship. We've done it elsewhere too!
Mechanics vs flavour - Blackstar and cybernetics in SWN
A while back we played a game of Stars Without Number called Blackstar. Midway through the game we wanted to make an introduce new combat character. The character was going to be a cool cybered-up mercenary, but then when we looked at the cybernetic loadouts available in the game we were rather underwhelmed. They were prohibitively expensive for a starting level character and not as cost efficient as just getting regular gear to do similar combat stuff (these things got addressed a bit in Cities Without Number years later).
But we found a clever workaround. All we wanted was for the character to be tough and be able to punch things really well, and what covered all of our needs were the Foci the characters could take - Ironhide and Unarmed Combatant. Thematically those are there to represent some kind of space shaolin monks or tough aliens, but there isn't really anything stopping you from saying those represent your character's cyberware. You get the mechanics you need and keep the flavour you wanted without having to deal with the cumbersome cybernetics system or getting any kind of mechanical advantage over a regular character.
Cybernetics? Nah, just Foci!
Conclusions
While you don't want to carelessly mess with game's mechanics while trying to make it fit the story you want to play, reflavouring existing mechanics to suit your needs works quite well with many games. When you're trying to customize a game like that, don't look at its aesthetical trappings, but instead at what the game wants to be mechanically.
And as for Fellowship, from what I've been hearing its third edition is currently in the works that might address some of the leading names for the Playbooks. Currently its Elf is the Star, Halfing is the Rascal, Dwarf is the Mountain, Orc is War Torn and so on.
So fingers crossed the game gets the recognition and accolades it deserves!
In RPGs players usually narrate what their character does and the GM narrates the world, the obstacles they face and how the NPCs act. But what if some powerful characters could flip that narrative on its head?
Years back my group and I played a game of Broken Worlds called Gangs of New Gloam. The system is set in the world of Kill Six Billion Demons and the PCs get to play some really powerful and competent characters (at least by standards of trad games like D&D).
You can be this cool!
One of our players played The Hunter playbook, which made them a legendary assassin. One of their powers stuck out to me in particular:
Mantra of Ovis, the Empty One
Name a character or location. If you spend a power
die, at some point before you next rest, you can tell
the GM that you’re there, very close to that character
or location, silently observing from a hidden perch.
You can’t tell anyone how you got there, not even
your GM - for that would be to reveal the Shadow
Arts.
It is at the same time simple, and yet very thematic and effective. Of course an assassin would easily find a way to get to their target while remaining hidden. Of course you don't need to ellaborate on how they got there since that would take away from the cool factor. But best of all, it also maintains the mystique by not even letting you explain how you got there, which was a part that really made it memorable!
In comparison, some time later I played a game of Exalted vs World of Darkness called Heaven for Everyone. It's a modern demigod game of PCs wielding ancient power and using it to wreck the old White Wolf setting. I played a Sidereal character that maxed out Stealth. Good spies in the setting would have maybe 6 dice, top level starting characters for most of the World of Darkness game would push things to 10 dice, this character had a resting stealth of 15, pushing it to 20 if needed be.
Stealth rating: Yes
During one of our missions the character needed to sneak in and out of a server room. Simple door, one person inside, but once you start describing the situation, it's hard to be a top level stealth character when an NPC only cracks open a door wide enough for them to stand in it, and then sits next to the door so you can't open it without knocking into them.
That kind of situation gave me an idea - what if at really high character competency, your script would flip and the player took control of the narration? What if you could turn Batman cool with it?
Henchmen are running, Batman appears out of nowhere and get them!
GM: You arrive at the mansion, it's guarded by a few patrols, the path brightly illuminated and everyone alert. Player: I activate my Batman powers (roll stealth test and pass vs the guards). A lightning lights up the night sky and a glimpse of a silluette is seen jumping between the trees. The light flickers for a second and a dark figure appears behind one of the guards next to a balcony door. Someone yells to check the breakers and they can't hear the creek of the door as I get into the mansion. GM: The inside corridors are patrolled by single armed guards. How do you get past them? Player: (Rolls stealth vs the guards) One of the guards feel a cool breeze passing by them as if they felt a ghost. How do they react? GM: They turn around and investigate! Player: They turn around and see an eerily empty corridor. They deviate from their path and check out one of the rooms to look for intruders. What they don't notice is a shadowy figure taking advantage of that and sneaking right past the now open corridor from a turn they didn't expect. GM: There is a single guard in the server room, looking at the monitors. Player: (Rolls stealth vs the guard) It has been a long night for Bob. His kids kept him up all day and he can barely keep his eyes open. His big coffee mug has ran dry and he'll need the kick to keep up his shift. Whether he goes to fill it himself or gets someone else to do it, he's distracted enough for his system to get compromised without him even realising it.
That kind of narration melted away the player character's physicality and let them move as a cinematic force of nature. The rolls guaranteed the outcome, and letting the player narrate beyond their immediate character it allowed to set the scene for an epic stealth. If instead you tried narrating how the character moved through the space and how those actions were performed, it would move them to the mundane and step by step nature of things. Much less worthy of Ovis, the Empty One.
Of course, this kind of approach is not for every game. It's much more geared towards high-power / high-competency games where the PCs are a cut above people they confront. The ones where you can look at a situation and comfortably say the PC can dominate it without breaking a sweat so you can just go straight for the question of "How do you want to do it?" (like a few GMs do when their players roll a critical success).
In pretty much every RPG and beyond you want to treat everyone fairly. Everyone has to follow the same rules, the same judgements should apply to all the players and their characters and the GM should be impartial under normal circumstances. But what if there was a character class where that meta assumption shouldn't apply, as a feature?
Exalted is a game about playing capital H Heroes like Gilgamesh, Hercules, Sun Wukong, etc. There are many types of Exalted out there, from the peak human Solars that can punch through mountains, through elemental scion Dragonblooded that combine Avatar elemental bending with Romance of the Three Kingdoms, down to some out there concepts like golem Alchemicals that fight for communism and keeping their mechanical world alive.
Amongst all of them, we find Sidereals, the troubleshooters of Fate. They aren't very strong, their numbers are pitiful, and they have the most thankless job in the whole world - cleaning up everyone's messes and making sure the reality doesn't break down so there can be a next day. But they have one important trick up their sleeve to level the playing field - they cheat.
Sidereals, they be like that.
When they needed to disappear from history in order to be able to manipulate the entire world in order to save it, they broke an entire constellation to erase the memory of themselves from existance. When their power set wasn't enough to defeat their enemies, they developed magic kung fu powerful enough to kick people out of reality. When they couldn't overthrow the tyrants of the world, they turned their allies against them.
So I would posit the same ought to apply to how a GM would handle them in a game. This isn't to say they should have a carte blanche permission to fudge their dice or cheat at the actual game, but that the way you interpret the rules for them should be more leniant towards being bent in their direction.
This kind of approach is especially important when you take an important part of Sidereals' design into consideration - their power set is fixed and intentionally broken. The peak human Solar might have a Charm that lets them convince a crowd that they are speaking the truth and everyone will believe them through the sheer power of their charisma. Sidereals, since they broke one of the constellations that housed some of their power, don't have a Charm like that. Instead, they can only convince people that the truth they are saying is a lie. You never get a straightforward solution to a problem out of them.
Similarly, because their Charm set is fixed, they can't invent new powers. A Solar could decide that they want to be the best wingsuit glider out there and they can make new Charms around wingsuit gliders to help them assault some air temple, a Sidereal must rely only on the printed Charms in the book. So they would have to make do with being able to turn a mortal into a dragon and using them as a mount to try sneaking into an air temple.
Their sacred task of resolving troubles of destiny also encourages them to cheat their way through their jobs. Maybe a king of some land should've died but due to the snag in the Loom of Fate they survived a battle and now the Sidereal needs to ensure the king dies. But when they get to the place and realize the king is a little boy they might feel guilty about drowning them in a pond. So instead they can get them to abdicate their throne to their evil uncle who promptly gets an arrow to the head just after their coronation and everything is back as it should be.
So by the dint of the game encouraging the Sidereal characters to cheat, it wouldn't be an invalid approach for the GM to allow the characters to cheat within the system as well. A Solar having a Charm that lets them move instantly to anywhere they see could be stopped by the GM when they try to squeeze in through a crack in a mountain cave since they can't fit, while a Sidereal with the same Charm would be allowed to do it since obviously they could cloak themselves from reality for a split second and be at the destination they can see since that is the text of the Charm.
And it's not like other Exalted types don't have some game-breaking powers of their own. In an even fight a Solar will beat a Sidereal nine times out of ten since they get to throw raw numbers at anything they do. This isn't Munchkin where the players must pull a fast one over one another, it's more like Dune or Cosmic Encounter board games where everyone has some kind of powers that makes everyone go "Wait, you can do WHAT?". It would be an interesting and under-explored design space though to have character powers that come from being handled differently at the adjudication part of the game.
Conclusions
Exalted's Sidereals are a splat built around inherent limitations in their power sets and being encouraged to break the rules in order to succeed. As such, an interesting approach to handling them at the table might be to have the GM handle them differently from other PCs, letting them break some meta conventions of the game.
Many RPGs out there as part of their worldbuilding establish in-universe rules and laws the player characters ought to obide by. But since those are separate from game and mechanical rules, their interpretation is often fuzzy. Do those laws exist as absolutes and GMs ought to be enforcing them, or are they meant to be broken and existing as something the PCs ought to fight against and win?
Since this topic seems to be cropping up in many RPGs, I figured it might be good to explore it!
Nobilis and the Windflower Law
Recently, our group has been talking about Nobilis, a game by Jenna Moran. One of the players wanted to have a Noble NPC be in love with another character, simple backstory building stuff. But then we were reminded by one particular passage in Nobilis, a law passed down from Lord Entropy, which simply states:
THE WINDFLOWER LAW: Thou shalt not love.
Which sparked a debate about whether that law is meant to be absolute, or something that adds to the drama of the game. Lord Entropy is the absolute ruler of Earth in Nobilis (and since the PCs will most likely play on Earth, they will be under his dominion), he laid down the Code Fidelitatis for Nobles to follow, so you'd think the players ought to follow them as absolute laws, right?
The brick walls are there to stop the OTHER people.
Which reading is correct, I can't say. I find Jenna's writing to be needlessly obtuse to the point I can't slog through the 300 page Nobilis, or the 400 page Glitch, or the 550 page Chuubo's, nor did I immerse myself in paratext about the game that might explain the meaning of such parts of the game.
World of Darkness, its Traditions and lawful stupid enforcement of them
An example of a similar topic that I have read and experienced much more of is the World of Darkness, and its Vampire Traditions, Mage Protocols, Werewolf Litany or whatever else might crop up in each specific gameline.
Each of those games has a set of rules that the societies the PCs are a part of follow and they keep the world in a stable state. But then when PCs come along and start going against those age old Traditions, what ought the GM do?
The nanosecond you break the Traditions the fun police get dispatched to get you
On one hand, since you have those Traditions, people put in place to enforce them and a good top-down pressure to use them to keep the newbies in-line, why wouldn't you make your supernatural society into the most authoritarian state out there where every transgression is instantly detected with the supernatural senses of Auspex (after all, why wouldn't everyone pat down your aura each time you enter Elysium?) and punished with execution.
Understandably though, this is the most boring, most player-vs-storyteller way to play the game. It's the lawful stupid of World of Darkness. Heck, Vampire the Requiem 2nd edition actually recognised it and finally added a textbox addressing it - "The Traditions are broken regularly enough that there’s a need for law, but not enough to break down vampire society or the veneer of the ordinary world that the Kindred hide behind. [...] The Traditions are deliberately designed so that vampires have motivation to break them, and so that there will be drama when they do.". Finally, a clear indicator that rules are meant to be broken!
Such direct, unambiguous communication is vital to letting the players and the GMs know how a game ought to be played so we don't end up with decades of party pooper NPCs in every campaign coming in to stop players from having fun breaking the rules.
Genre conventions and laws that improve the game
While we discussed times when in-universe laws were meant to be broken, there is also a flipside to this argument - rules that enforce genre conventions and improve the game.
An example of this would be Legen of the Five Rings' Bushido. Since that game is steeped in the samurai cinema and its romanticised view of the Japanese history, its bushido is inspired by its real-life counterpart. Since the players are expected to play honourable samurai, these rules exist to steer the players and their characters into how they are supposed to be playing.
Of course, even such genre conventions and rules can still be broken, but ought to be done with intention and good reason. After all, Forty-Seven Rōnin is a big cultural touchstone for just such a thing!
Sometimes the most honourable thing is to act dishonourably... for a time.
Similarly, you can have the drama that comes from such rules coming in conflict with one another, or the tragedy of having to uphold them in extreme situations. It would be a much different game after all if PCs decided to go and murder the emperor because they decided he's weak and they would be much better suited to rule Rokugan...
All of that is to say, sometimes in-universe rules are actually meant to be followed.
Conclusions
When you are writing an RPG book, pay close attention to what you are stating as norms of any given setting. Be explicit about the differences between the setting as it sees itself and the setting as it is in practice. Use an appropriate voice to communicate such intent and don't leave things ambiguous. Make your point clear in the same spot you state those societal norms - don't expect the players to read the entire book to see a correction elsewhere. Don't expect the readers to have any knowledge of any ofther paratext that is not explicitly called out and referenced. Your work needs to stand on its own and can't rely on any clarifications made outside of it. It is okay to be direct and blunt, it's okay to call on genre conventions, it's better to state the obvious than let something that is not obvious remain unstated.
Sometimes RPG groups have a problem with getting the right kind of characters together for an adventure. Whether it's people wanting to play lone wolves that are too cool to care, someone making a chaotic neutral character that will just go goblin mode, or just a PC that doesn't know how to tie their backstory to what's going on, it can be a challenge for the group and the GM to tie everyone together to just go and do what they planned for the adventure to be. But, there is a neat solution to that - starting backstory bonuses!
Recently, our GM started a new EvWoD game with us - To Build a Fyre (which will probably air sometime in 2024, here is the rough game pitch). It was a modern game set in a dome city deep in the antarctic ocean. The game had a lot of moving parts, key NPCs and big mysteries to investigate. But in order to ensure that the PCs were actually invested in the premise and were proactive about looking into those mysteries, everyone had to have hooks and leads to follow out of their own volition. They needed reasons to go on a multi-year contract to the Antarctic, to interact with various NPCs, to care about what's going on. The game didn't have space for lone wolves, wallflowers or some really out there concepts like a benevolent cult leader demon that is building a figurative Noah's Arc to let their followers Heaven's Gate into a peaceful afterlife.
So our GM came up with a clever solution to it - starting backstory bonuses. Basically, the game came with 11 different hooks and plots to choose from that would define some part of the character's backstory, give them a lead to follow, as well as give them a bonus to their starting character based on that backstory. You could for example been invited to Atlantis Zero by the Conspiracy of the Lotus, a shadowy organisation that is trying to exert more control over the city. Your starting bonus would be a minor magical artefact they gifted you, and your first order of business would be to reach out to them and get initiated into the society proper to learn what schemes they expect you to help them with. Or you could have been a part of a PMC group sent by a billionnaire to extract his son from the Atlantis Zero prison, but you got attacked on the ice shelf and are the only survivor of your squad - you have a good deal of military gear, but now you have to figure out how to get that kid out by yourself. Or maybe you were helping a three letter organisation and their alien friend find their missing counterpart that has crash landed in the area. Now you have an alien to help you infiltrate the facility, but you also need to take care of them.
Since everyone needs to take one of those backstories, you will know everyone will have some kind of hook to the place right at the start and by having those backstories inform the characters being made you know you will at least have some kind of PC that fits the setting. Plus, players always like getting a little bit extra, so they will be glad to take the bonuses that come with these!
If you run the same adventure / module / etc. for multiple groups, you can also plan your stories knowing where the players will be coming in from. You might not have every backstory represented, but if every one of them leads into your story proper or to the other stories, you will be able to pick up and play that adventure more easily without having to figure out yet another reason to tie your new PCs into the story.
Recently I ran a political intrigue / investigation adventure called The Storms of Yizhao for a few groups. It has a few neat approaches to doing a political intrigue game that you might want to borrow for your campaign. So let's go over them!
(If you want to run the adventure yourself, I strongly recommend using The Yang Version of the module since it addresses a few problems the original adventure had. We've also done a conversion for Fellowship and Exalted Demake if you prefer those systems)
The adventure sees the demigod PCs investigate the titular storms of Yizhao - a supernatural curse that is ravaging the city. They are tasked to solve the problem by the local governor that will give them a sizeable reward for stopping the storms. The players quickly learn the storms are caused by an Altar of Heaven, an ancient artefact created by a diety that imposes its morality onto the people and punishes them for its transgressions. So that means someone in the city is doing something really bad to upset the local customs, and getting to the bottom of who caused it is the PCs' ultimate goal.
During their investigations the players will interact with a couple of big name NPCs, from the governor, through a philosopher sage, down to a merchant matriarch. And here the crux of the mystery and political intrigue comes in.
Each of the big NPCs the players meet will gladly tell the PCs what they want out of them and what their take on the situation is. The merchant matriarch wants the governor deposed, dead, or both. The local royal caretaker of the Altar wants to just blow it up and go be a movie star. The philosopher sage wants to brainwash the entire town into being perfectly loyal citizens. Many of the motives are extreme and in a normal game might be a reason to send some constables after the NPCs to get them arested, but this isn't a normal situation. The NPCs aren't hiding their motives because each one of them lacks something that they need the PCs to do for them to complete their plan. A censor needs some documents stolen. The philosopher sage needs the PCs to tresspass by the Altar where they are not allowed to go. The merchant matriarch needs the PCs to steal a shipment of taxes.
So the NPCs will gladly let the PCs know exactly what they want to accomplish and what needs to be done to fulfil their goals. This lets the players know exactly what is going on, who hates who, and what their chemes are so they can make a somewhat informed decisions on what to do without having to do a roundabout song and dance to figure the basics out. It gets them right in the action and making decisions within minutes of meeting a new NPC.
Of course, there are layers to the situation. Every NPC has a goal and a plan, but sometimes their motives are hidden. Each of the NPCs also has a lead on what is really going on in Yizhao that is at the root of the problem that they will disclose if the PCs complete their quest or find some other way of leveraging them. They also each have a bias to what truth they see.
The merchant matriarch hates the governor because of his high taxes. She wants the PCs to steal the tax shipment so she can return it to the people. This is a lie. She wants to pass the shipment onto the censor to frame the governor of trying to steal his own silver to get him executed. She will tell any kind of sob story to the PCs to get them to get the governor deposed, she will lie that he's embezzling the taxes, spending it on his vices and latch onto anything the PCs bring to her to pin it on the governor. The truth she knows though is that there are people going missing from all walks of life in the city, which is really strange...
The philosopher sage believes the lax morals of the common people are the reasons the Altar of Heaven is punishing everyone. She is biased and wrong in that regard, but she doesn't know it. She wants it to be true, so she believes in it wholeheartedly. She is convinced that by empowering it to turn all the commoners of Yizhao into brainwashed Upright citizens the truth will be inevitably unveiled because it cannot take root in such a moral society that will be created. In that regard she is right, at least if you lean into "ends justify the means" kind of thinking...
Of course, some NPCs are simpler and some are more complex. The royal caretaker will let the players know he wants to just be a movie star straight away and what he needs from them to help himself escape. He is also quite eager to talk about what he thinks about the Altar and what insight he has. There is no second layer to him. Meanwhile the merchant matriarch will gladly lie about everything just to get what she wants. She will gladly ommit that she's extorting the people for money, that she's in cahoots with the censor, that she will use the stolen taxes as means for getting the governor executed, that she doesn't know if the governor is doing anything unsavory and what have you. Some variety like that means players don't expect everyone to have exactly one fake mask on they need to get through.
The garnish to the adventure are the various lesser NPCs and situations the PCs can interact with. People that have small immediate problems that show the players what the more ordinary life is like in the adventure. You have some young man that is being publicly humiliated for disobeying his mother, a merchant that can't pay the new taxes and will be fined for complaining about it too loudly, some courtesan that tries to hex the demigod PCs to give her a singing voice, etc. I tend to pace the adventure so that inbetween meeting any big name NPCs the players run into one minor situation to have something simple to solve in five to ten minutes.
Having a good number of such encounters also lets you tailor them to what the players are thinking. If they think the governor is up to no good and you want to double up on that, show them how people are treated by the government. If you want to expose the merchant matriarch for being corrupt, give them some merchant that can't afford guild dues. If they have done most of the adventure but can't connect the dots, give them an encounter that steers them in the right direction.
Finally, this adventure has multiple off-ramps for the players to end it how they see fit. They don't need to solve the mystery to solve the problem of the storms. Based on character skills, they can destroy the Altar, modify it, empower it, get to the bottom of the problem and punish those responsible, or even just leave because this place is just misery. All of those are valid end points for the adventure, some can be achieved within an hour or two of playing it.
Conclusions
The Storms of Yizhao showcases a few interesting tricks to running a compelling political introgue game.
First of all, all the NPCs share exactly what they want out of the PCs and why they want it quickly and readily. They will gladly share what they think of other NPCs. This lets the PCs understand the political landscape of the adventure fairly quickly without having to pry information out of the NPCs.
Secondly, some NPCs operate on multiple layers of truth. What they tell the PCs might be a lie, it might be a biased view of things, or it might actually be true. The PCs have the means to figure out what is really going on with some effort, but no NPC holds the whole picture.
Thirdly, minor NPCs and encounters help flesh out the world and can shape how the players view the situation. There are more such encounters than the party will encounter in an adventure, and which one gets presented depends on what the GM needs at the time.
Finally, there are multiple off-ramps for the players to complete the adventure before seeing the entire picture that feel like a satisfying end. Those ends are always triggered by the players consciously going for them rather than something the NPCs do in the background.
While it might not be the only way to run political intrigue games, I do think the scenario is an interesting case study. The recordings of multiple groups going through it should eventually be uploaded to this playlist in case you want to see how it plays out in practice.
Recently our group had a discussion about the progression of earning new dots in Backgrounds in an Old World of Darkness campaign we've been playing. He's been trying to beef up security in his Dragon Nest (magical lair from EvWoD), bolster his Resources by robbing some ATMs and strengthen the bonds with his demonic advisor. But because all of these interactions have been rather subtle, neither the GM nor other players noticed this until it was brought up recently that these things haven't budged on his character sheet. Unlike everything else that can be bought with XP, this one part of the character sheet falls under "just roleplay it out and GM should award you some points", which falls under the unguided realm of "mother may I" which doesn't ever seem to be a good part of an RPG. Let's go over the problem in more detail.
Hey GM, is this enough for Resources 2?
What are Backgrounds?
Backgrounds, also sometimes called Merits, are parts of the character in the Storytelling System that are mostly extrinsic to the character. They are things like income, fame, people that work for you, how influential you are in the region, how powerful of a mentor is guiding you, etc. Unlike D&D, in the Storytelling System your character can start being a rich, influential political figure if you spend your points right, which can be pretty fun.
The problem is that in some of the Storytelling Systems, like Vampire the Masquerade after character creation raising existing or getting new Backgrounds cannot be done with XP, unlike everything else. Instead, they are raised as a consequence of the narrative and roleplaying.
While this isn't universal (Chronicles of Darkness let you buy any Merit with XP and Exalted lets you buy some Merits with XP), it can certainly be annoying.
Just roleplay it out!
I personally dislike any system that tells the players or the GM to just roleplay any broad part of the game out without any guidelines or rules. They always leave things wishy-washy and even if the GM wants to be conductive to the players advancing their things, it often feels arbitrary. How do you gaige of a player has sufficiently roleplayed becoming a millionaire to raise their income? How do you balance one player nagging the GM consistently to get those Backgrounds they want vs a player that is less forward about what they want? Should a player that can make money out of thin air just be given the money Background another player invested a good part of their starting character points into? If a player wants to roleplay getting some powerful artefact as a Background, should they just be allowed to? How do you roleplay learning Mandarin for five years if the in-game sessions happen day-to-day?
This is kind of like when character's social influence is left entirely to roleplay - the option is never as useful as the concrete option of violence. If you have the XP to up your proficiency in a skill like Melee, you as the player are in control of the character getting more competent and that has a tangible application on the session - your numbers go up, you are numerically better. You can't rely on having that same agency if your GM doesn't facilitate you getting the Backgrounds you want (even leaving aside some more hostile GMs that don't want you to get them, even well meaning GMs may forget to set the scene you need or you may fumble meeting a potential Mentor / Contact / Ally, etc.).
Just spend the XP!
Seeing how the New World of Darkness solved this issue in 2004, I'm surprised this approach hasn't been backported to the 20th anniversary edition in 2011. Just letting the players spend XP to buy points in Backgrounds would address this issue and give players the agency to push for their character improving things external to themselves. As always, you'd want to also tie the system into Sanctity of Merits (a system from Chronicles of Darkness where if you lose something you spent XP on, you get refunded that XP) not to make players lose their investments and feel bad about it.
Of course, one can argue whether or not some particular Backgrounds (such as Mentor, money, artefacts, etc.) should cost XP if sometimes players can happen upon them, but that's a bigger topic for another day...
Recently I've been watching some RPG Blender actual play of Exalted 3E and I've noticed something about a few episodes or scenes - there was basically little of note happening in them! You could summarise entire scenes or hour long episodes down in a sentence or two and not lose much. As someone that is also a part of an actual play group I think there is something to be learned here.
It's time to talk about optimising air time!
Disclaimers
There are a few important disclaimers to get out of the way before we start.
First of all, I understand this was a fan project and should be judged accordingly. I am thankful for the effort the cast has put into entertaining us with their stories, but there will be some criticism of the podcast present.
Secondly, any criticism made against the characters portrayed or how the game played out should not be held as criticism or insults of the game master or the players. Not everyone is perfect and sometimes something doesn’t work out or falls flat in execution. It’s important to keep the art separate from the artist and focus on the former without being disrespectful to the latter.
Thirdly, since I’m also a part of an RPG Actual Play Podcast that features Exalted games, I might be biased towards one interpretation and way of handling things in Exalted that might not agree with how others view and play the game, that’s to be expected. That and some might see criticising other podcasts a conflict of interest or something, so here is your disclaimer.
With that out of the way...
The offenders - idle chat, planning, combat and downtime
So here is an overview of the kind of situations I noticed are just "filler" in the episode, in a sense that you could cut them down or out without losing much of the story.
In Season 1 Episode 1 Welcome To Nexus the second half of the episode boils down to "buy supplies, go down a sewer pipe, dodge molten metal that barely does harm to you, find some tracks and follow them". This takes a good half an hour to get through. Sure, part of it is due to the group being new to the system (they only ever played a one-shot of the system, and Exalted 3E is a bit of a dense game), but the other part is everyone in the party interacting with the same tracks (looking at them, smelling them, tasting them) while mostly chatting idly and repeating what the GM told them.
In Season 1 Episode 11 Freedom For Arvia the second half of the episode consists almost entirely of the group planning what to do next, going over their options for where to turn in their quest basically.
Season 1 Episode 8, 9 and 10 are almost entirely made out of one extended fight.
In Season 1 Episode 13 Perchance to Dream the players describe how they spend a week of downtime, day after day, which boils down to "get paid, do a research in a library, talk about the dream they are having, steal some things, tail someone and do some training".
So let's go over the concepts one by one.
The idle chatter is a bit of a difficult one to avoid. You want your players to be talking to one another and engage with what is being presented, since that is a step up from players being rather passive and not filling the airtime. But on the other hand, if they are already good about creating enough content, you don't want everyone commenting on everything that's going on. If someone is focused on finding a trail, the spotlight is on them to lead the group to follow them. It's their time to shine and have the spotlight! Heck, Exalted 3E even incentivises you with a Role Bonus - you get XP for letting others have a spotlight and being cool according to their character concept:
Over-planning is one of those problems a number of more modern RPGs try to solve. It's a hard habit to break - players want to make optimal decisions and they want to anticipate problems that might arise, but that not only leads to overly-cautious play, but also a lot of air time devoted to chatting about the things you're going to do rather than doing them. Heck, in our Princes of the Universe game those things would even end in a deadlock because players couldn't agree on what to do, or didn't like what others wanted to do. It fostered an attitude of "just do what you want, since the group is more likely to forgive you after the fact since they won't care anymore than agree to let you do it in the first place"...
But at any rate, this kind of planning and deliberation not only takes a good deal of time in the game, it's also not that terribly engaging in comparison to the players actually doing something. It would be much more productive to develop some trust between the players and the GM and speed things along. Players shouldn't deliberate too much on what to do next, and the GM shouldn't punish them for acting without considering everything. Heck, it's more entertaining when not everything goes the way the players wanted and there is some obstacle to overcome, but those shouldn't be seen as a punishment but as a cool action scene you get to do.
Combat being slow is unfortunately the staple of Exalted 3E and many other systems, so it's kind of unavoidable. Heck, in one of our own episodes we spend like, 3 hours doing a fight that amounted to like one or two cool situations. There is a good deal of back and forth in Exalted combat, which is not helped by players being able to "stunt" their defence (cinematically describing how they counter an attack to get a boost to their defense). In a pre-recorded game, ideally you'd edit out a lot of the pauses, rolls, rules lookups and all that, but it can be a bit of a problem for streamed games.
Unfortunately, there isn't a great time saver to be had here unless you'd switch out what game you're using, which might not be the option for every group. Save that, maybe you could try optimising your game to speed things up a little. Maybe limiting the amount of combatants in a fight, maybe cutting down on some stunting (like, assume everyone gets a stunt so people don't have to describe how they parry a sword with their sword for the 20th time), etc.
Downtime, on the other hand, is something that can use a good deal of streamlining. Players should come into it with a purpose - what they want to accomplish. Based on that, everyone could get a scene where they do just that and focus on that being a cool moment, rather than switch between one player and the next every minute as they incrementally do what they set out to do. Give them some time slots. Heck, give the players a heads up that they will be doing a downtime and ask them to come up with interesting things they'd like to do ahead of the session so you'd come into this freeform time knowing what cool stuff will be going down!
Part of the downtime in RPG Blender that make it a little longer was also down to calling for some rolls that didn't need them. The big goal of that session was figuring out a vision the characters were having - where in the world is it located. That was accomplished by paying for a library access and two characters bunkering down to study it over the course of multiple rolls. The thing is, this was basically a start of a new quest for them, so from the narrative perspective, the players couldn't fail to find the location otherwise the entire quest couldn't begin. This makes it so strange why they were rolling to do the research, other than it taking up some time...
How other games streamline this
It's one thing to talk about some lofty theory on what to do and another to point out some systems that are already solving these issues. So let's talk about Fellowship!
Lesson one - supplies. In Fellowship you don't generally buy gear, your character comes with a gear list you pick from during character creation. The game knows you're an adventurer, so you have the basic supplies that don't matter for the story (something to sleep on, clothes, all that jazz). If you need a piece of gear to solve a problem (like a climbing rope, a ladder, some consumable tool, etc.) that's covered under Useful Gear:
So bam - no shopping is needed, if you want to come prepared make sure you have Useful items, no need to plan anything specific. Easy peasy, squeezed lemons.
Lesson two - working together. In Exalted, if multiple people are working together, first person rolls a check and the number of successes are added as dice to the next person's roll. Also, since this is Exalted, both of them will be stunting to describe how they are helping and so on and so on. That's like twice the amount of descriptions and rolls than you need. In Fellowship that's Bond That Bind Us:
People declare they are doing the same thing together, only one of them rolls, but adds an extra die to the roll and everything's easy. You don't have multiple people doing the same roll, but cooperation is still useful. Easy!
Lesson three - failing forward and investigation. Fellowship very much wants your game to progress, even if it is through failure. So when you are examining some clues or doing some research, you will always learn something, even if it backfires in some way. This ensures there is no gridlock in the game because the players roll badly and fail to get the clue they need to unlock the next step of the quest. This is done through Look Closely:
And of course, if you have other people helping you with the research, you use The Bonds That Bind Us so only one person rolls even if multiple people are contributing and so on. It's more efficient!
Lesson four - combat. In Fellowship, the combat isn't turn by turn, but more flowing. The spotlight is on you, you continue rolling until you fail and get into trouble, then the spotlight goes to someone else. If you're not saved from your consequences by the time the spotlight comes back to you, you have to deal with it yourself, usually by taking the hit. This basically means there will be less moving the combat beat by beat from player to player, but having more action scenes going down one after the other.
Lesson five - downtime. In Fellowship, this is a structured activity called A Little Downtime:
This covers doing research, training, having some other cool moments over the course of time passing and so on. It usually takes only minutes though, after which the group accomplishes what they need so they can get to their next objective. Sometimes to deal with a situation you have to "spend" enough scenes of the Downtime addressing the issue. It's still simple and efficient (and ties very neatly into a long rest, healing up, changing gear and how the BBEG progresses their evil plans, but that's a story for another time when we discuss Fellowship in more detail).
Conclusions
When you're creating an RPG stream or an actual play, you want to come into the game and every scene with a direction and a purpose. You want to entertain your audience and respect their time. Chatter for the sense of chatter shouldn't exist - you want to have scenes that further the plot, explore the characters, entertain, world build, etc.
And if you can pick games that streamline the game, or at least steal some good ideas from them to help you with your game, all the better ;).
Recently, I've watched Dimension 20's Fantasy High Season 1, and the show's first two episodes really encapsulate why Dungeons & Dragons is awful for Actual Plays.
Some disclaimers and qualifiers before I get further. I'm not hating on Dimension 20 (I've seen a few of their shows and I do enjoy them for what they are), the people involved (I've enjoyed their performance through that show), or saying that you shouldn't play D&D (although there are so many better options...). I'm focusing precisely on Dungeons & Dragons as a framework for a gaming performance in the format of a video or audio Actual Play. I'm also speaking as someone that has 5 years of doing their own Actual Plays and as someone that has watched a few APs in their time.
So without further ado, let's talk about Fantasy High (spoiler warning for various episodes of the series, as well as some Escape from the Bloodkeep).
Fantasy High
Fantasy High is a show about a group of adventurers going to an adventuring academy, a fantasy high school where you learn how to be an adventurer, filled with all of the D&D races and classes. A pretty okay setup that gets elevated by the amount of colourful characters that populate the school and the nearby town. From an ice-cream djinn, through a chill werewolf guidance councillor, down to anarcho-socialist halfling family. The player characters are also a colourful cast - you have spoiled rich son of a pirate, a gentle half orc barbarian that doesn't want to hurt anyone, a rebellious tiefling bard going through some issues after her horns recently came in and her dad learned he has been cucked, etc. All in all, the characters are really interesting, the performance through the entire show has been great, I could listen to these things all day with glee. That is, if it wasn't for the second half.
Dimension 20 has a formula for their shows. You usually have two kinds of episode formats that keep alternating - a free form roleplaying with some light checks and conflicts, and then the big set piece fights. They are gorgeous to look at, featuring large customised areas, a lot of unique minis and so on:
The craft on display is phenomenal, there is no denying that. Dimension 20 has taken the D&D formula of "minis fighting" and made the best version of that I have seen. However, it still doesn't solve the issue of this being D&D that we're talking about. So let's set the scene:
It's episode 2 of Fantasy High. All the PCs got into detention for one reason or another. You could run it as your stereotypical "detention bad, the teacher running it is a warden, everything sucks", but no, Dimension 20 is better than that (heck, they even work with sensitivity consultants, kudos to them!), and the guidance councillor starts encouraging the PCs to talk about their feelings, whether they have trouble at home, etc. It's a tiny one minute of a show, but it showed potential, especially when one of the characters started opening up about their issue at home (it was the tiefling, now living alone with her mother who she's on a war path with since she won't tell her anything about her real father). But just as that's about to happen, we hear screams from the cafeteria and it's off to fight we go!
In the cafeteria we find a large cream corn monster, a possessed lunch lady, and a bunch of animated corn cobs, and we have ourselves a level 1 adventurer fight. What follows is a series of mishaps, bad rolls and just a lot of what could go wrong does go wrong. The tiefling gets knocked out cold at the start of the fight, and through the rest of the encounter, that player sits there and stews, unable to contribute anything but quips about how people should throw her body around (I don't hold anything against the player there, it did look frustrating!). A few others, including a swashbuckling jock son of a pirate repeatedly have problems climbing the tables and lose a good deal of health and turns because of that. Enemies start multiplying to the point they murder two player characters (and they do fail their death saving throws and actually die). A prissy elven wizard is reduced to bludgeoning the lunchlady to death with a magical spatula and her scepter (the lunchlady has been the tiefling's freshly adopted role model, since she was going through a rebellious spell and respected a blue collar worker for being the only honest person in the school), with her dying words telling the elf to remember that she killer her with her own hands.
I'm going to leave out the number of times people have been going in and out of many of the cream monster's buttholes, and just skip to the end where the heroes manage to defeat it. Since this is a show that's built on the characters that were just introduced and two of them have died, the GM has to pull out a deus ex resurrection to put the show back on the road. Not to make it consequence-free however, they have the quirky principal of the school (if Dumbledore was a bit more peppy but also a D&D character) murder the soft-spoken guidance councillor with a gun before committing a suicide and using a phoenix egg to resurrect the two PCs - a life for a life. At this moment the tiefling player still upset about having to sit in the time-out through the encounter wants to also commit suicide to bring back the lunchlady, but since they are unconscious they don't get their wish.
So all of that fight was a big clusterfuck, pretty much all due to D&D's rules. So let's start breaking things down.
Failures of D&D
Character death vs character-driven show
Dimension 20 is a pretty character-driven show. One of its core appears is that you can count on there being a cast of colourful characters at the table, portrayed by some very talented people, and through the show you get to have some of their problems, arcs and so on come to the forefront. For example, initially I disliked one of the PCs being your stereotypical born-again-bible-thumping-christian-coded girl that worshipped the Corn God. It felt too much like the proselytising type trope at the outset. However, through the serie she started reflecting on her life after having a brief death experience and realising the Corn God is a bit of a douche-bro and can't answer the problem of evil. Later she realises she has been raised in a fundamental family, been part of a religious extremist cult and discovers herself anew. It's really great.
D&D, however, is not a game that promotes that. Rules as written, the characters can die pretty much during any fight and you're not really meant to get too attached to them. Heck, one of the reason why "grognard" is associated with the game is because it's kind of like going to a ruthless war - what's the point of getting attached to the new level 1 guy if he's going to bite the dust during the first fight. Nobody cares about your backstory until you're level 3 and can survive an encounter with a rat.
Sure, that can be okay to play if you're into that, and the more recent editions of the game have softened the danger a little bit, but trying to do a character-centric game in D&D is still a liability if you don't fudge things or have some convenient way of bringing the characters back.
And for those that think that a story without the stake of character death is meaningless or the like - watch any popular movie. You know going into like, any Marvel movie that no character there will randomly die without a proper payoff and definitely not before their arc is over. You know Thor won't be Ragnarok'ed and will be there for the next movie. You still get invested.
Incompetence, coolness and stunting
D&D is awful when it comes to character competency due to its linear rolls. Chances are whatever you try doing at level 1 you will fail. It's not a game that wants you to be a cool badass, it's a game that wants to watch you faceplant into the floor whenever you try something.
Part of it is its approach to how it handles cool actions. When you declare that you will do something cool, like swinging down a chandelier and leaping from one table to the next before backflipping over the enemy to stab them in the back, the game expects your GM to make you roll to see if you pull it off and tell you "no" if you fail a roll. If you do the most boring action though ("I move forward and attack"), you don't have to roll anything special.
The thing is, you do want the characters to show off how cool they are. It makes the game more interesting, and definitely more fun to listen to! So don't penalise them, don't make them roll and fail, heck, give them bonuses for being cool! That's one of the things I enjoyed about Exalted - stunting. Basically, the cooler you described your action the bigger bonus you got. A lot of the players in Fantasy High could easily do really cool stunts and the game would've been even more cool for it (as it stands, it's only so cool with a pirate jock riding a hellbeast motocycle onto a stone golem to do a cool stunt on its back's half-pipe to throw it into a pit of acid...).
Rolls are boring, damage is mostly meaningless
When playing D&D, you spend a lot of time rolling dice, especially in combat. Add situations where those rolls get more complicated, such as with the use of inspiration (and if you take a shot each time someone on the show gets an inspiration you will get pretty drunk...), and you spend a lot of time rolling your math rocks.
Sure, this is fun when you're actually doing it yourself, but for a viewer, the rolls are only interesting if they are high-stakes, or someone ends up rolling a botch or a crit. Sooner than later individual rolls stop mattering, since a character suffering 5 points of damage out of their 80HP pool is just noise.
Once again, Dimension 20 does the best with what they have. They put visuals up to illustrate people's health as it changes and make the process as engaging as possible, which is commendable, but such edits are someone's job there. It would be quite a bit of extra work for anyone that is not doing this as a full-time job.
In general, it's much more interesting to play a game like D&D than to actually watch the game being played - passive vs active engagement and all that. You will have to put in a lot more work to get some interesting content.
Fights and rolls create funny moments, not interesting stories
A good RPG system helps you create interesting stories and character moments. Unfortunately, D&D combat isn't that great for it. Sure, it can create funny moments, and sometimes cool moments, but they are rarely interesting stories, despite how much time you're devoting to it.
For perhaps the best illustration of it, I'll have to turn to Dimension 20's other show, Escape from the Bloodkeep. It's a show where the PCs are knockoff evil characters from knockoff Lord of the Rings fighting the heroes. Many times in that show the Witch-king of Angmar would face off against Samwise Gamgee, who was armed only with a frying pan and a whole heap of enthusiasm. The thing is, the hobbit had such high stats that he would routinely stand his ground against the Witch-king and batter him pretty handily with that frying pan, turning their fights into some slapstick Bugs Bunny skit, all because the Witch-King couldn't kill this one halfing. Was it funny? Yes. Was it an interesting story? Not really. It was slapstick. Unfortunately, that's about as much as D&D gives you.
Sure, everyone has an awesome story about how one roll change the course of their game's history, or how they rolled an impossible roll and just dominated some situation. However, those are often stories about a single cool moment, not big interesting stories. Sure, it can be a fun entertainment to see your enemy roll nat 20 and then you matching it with your own nat 20 and the table exploding with emotions, but it's kind of like action for action's sake in a movie - entertainment without a deeper meaning.
Sitting in the death roll penalty box
Many times during the Fantasy High run the characters ended up at death's door, having to roll their death saving throws and not getting to do much. Again, the worst offender was Episode 2 where the tiefling player pretty much had to sit out the entire fight in the penalty box just because they got KOd early and nobody could heal her. You could see and hear the player's frustration with the system and being an unconscious deadweight in the corner of the room. Again, I don't fault the player for any of that - it's the system that creates these scenarios.
When you play a game, you don't want to have to sit and do nothing. Being forced to skip your turns is one of the least fun things because you don't even get to have to focus on coming up with strategies on how to not lose. And if you are doing a show professionally and have some actual actors on your show, you don't want them to sit by the table and not act out their character. It's not fun for them, and you're paying them some good money to sit and do nothing.
Ideally, you'd have a system where characters don't go down that easily and can always contribute something. Fellowship does that pretty well for example - it takes a lot of beating to put someone down (most of the game focuses instead on a death by a thousand cuts, so you know it's coming), and even if you are badly hurt you still have pretty good odds at doing something to contribute to the game.
Regularly scheduled murderhobos
D&D is a game that's focused on combat and murdering enemies. Countless people have pointed out the problematic colonial issues with that, and how Gygax essentially says Paladins would be okay with the Sand Creek Massacre. So how do you square that with a fantasy 50s americana setting of Fantasy High? The answer apparently is - you don't.
While you can gloss over killing of corn cuties and other monsters, the things get problematic when you are fighting humanoid NPCs, especially when they are a part of the same school the PCs go to. Unfortunately, Dimension 20 being a D&D show and one with an episode structure of there being a fight every second episode, there are some times when things get really iffy if you think about them.
In Episode 3 the PCs learn of Johnny Spells, a greaser teen that likes to hit on high school girls despite not going to the school. They get some cryptic message telling them to investigate him to try finding some lost girls. At the end of the episode they find him in his greaser joint with his buddies doing some aggressive dance routines. Overall, the character came off as a cross between someone cool and kind of creepy, but it's never really been established by that point that he was a scumbag or anything.
But oh no, the clock is ticking and it's almost the end of the talking and investigation episode, and you know what that means, it's time to start your regularly scheduled fight. The format must remain unchanged, and a lot of people have put in a lot of hard work to make some cool minis, so instead of confronting Johnny and trying to figure out what his deal is, or even getting the magic mcguffin they came in here for, the team decides to steal the mcguffin and the keys to Johnny's car and book it.
Episode 4 is a street race fight, where the PCs fight Johnny and his gang that are trying to get his car back. This being D&D of course involves a good deal of violence, since the mechanics inform the playstyle. So the PCs murder a group of teens after stealing their ride really for no reason at all, other than this is a Dimension 20 show and the episode number is even, so we have to fight.
And again, I'm not saying that Dimension 20 did a bad job at making the fight itself entertaining to watch, or that the minis weren't cool to look at, it's just that the script being so rigid and you having to have a fight every second episode will inevitably lead to the PCs being murderhobos. I would love to instead see a system where you have different resolution systems so you can have competitions that aren't just murdering each other. Or a system or setting where it's okay to fight one another since the people don't get murdered at the end (make it like a campy Transformers episode or something, where people shoot one another but that's okay, there will be there to shoot one another many times more). But no, this is D&D and violence is always an option.
Sure, you could argue that in that world it's okay to murder people, but late in the season the characters do go to jail for murdering people and the police do explicitly say it's not okay, so the text of the show doesn't support that argument.
So if you're planning on running a game where you don't murder everything as a way of resolving your conflicts by default, D&D doesn't have much to offer in this regard.
It's there to sell you toys
D&D is not only a game about fighting, it's also a game with deep roots in miniature wargaming that's owned by Hasbro, a toy company. If I was a cynic I would say that chances are a game pushed by a toy company will want to sell you toys, and I might not be far off. There are so many miniatures you can buy for the game it's crazy, and when you see a show like Dimension 20 playing with their cool minis your brain might go "boy, I want some of that plastic tosh to play with! Let me get my wallet!".
Luckily, I haven't seen Dimension 20 try to push their own line of minis in the merch store, but I'd kind of be weary of promoting a game in good conscious that kind of encourages you to buy overpriced plastic and a lot of books to be able to play "like the cool kids on TV".
This also means you can't really run D&D as an audio-only podcast without making it really dull to listen to or cutting a lot of boring content out. Not everyone has the budget to set up cameras for the crew, buy minis, paint them well, do some action shots during the fight and so on. Even running it virtually in some third party program to create a virtual arena you still have to have a good enough computer to record and render everything. This creates a much higher startup cost for anyone wanting to run the game than something that can be comfortably played in the theatre of the mind.
And again, this is more of a deeper discussion about whether it's okay to support a game that is not free of controversy and possibly creates a pressure for the show's audience to buy its merch through peer pressure of sorts. But that's a bit beyond our today's discussion.
The flip side
Of course, things can't really be clear cut. While D&D is really an awful game for an Actual Play when looked through its mechanics, that might not really be that important. D&D does being in a lot of eyes to the show because it's popular and people know it. A lot of people won't tune in to the show to see the Dimension 20 crew, they will tune in to see a high-production D&D unfortunately. So it's up to the show producers to weigh in the drawbacks of using a system they have to struggle with the benefits of a large audience and possibly a large corporation to boost their visibility.
Conclusions
Dimension 20 is probably the Actual Play with the highest production value I have seen. It executes its premise and works very hard within its constraints to bring perhaps the best version of what it sets out to do. It is unfortunate though, that what they have to work with is D&D.
D&D from a mechanical standpoint is a liability for any Actual Play show. It limits what kind of stories you can tell (everyone must be a murderhobo or an accessory to murderhobos), has a tendency of killing characters off prematurely, puts players in a timeout box when they do avoid death, and is something you have to have a good setup to record your minis, play areas and so on so your viewers don't get lost in the action.
In return the game rewards you with nothing but its BRAND. Sure, that might be good enough for a lot of people, but personally I'd love to see some more indie games getting the love and attention.
Of course, playing the game yourself is different from doing it as a performance. It is a different kind of engagement since you are in control of the action, rather than just witnessing what's happening. You can still enjoy a game even if it's not a good fit for an Actual Play.
And hey, if anyone from Dimension 20 want a pitch for a cool game, why not copy our Fellowship game in the Transformers universe. It's another Hasbro product, and it would be cool to see what you do by taking the existing toys and modding the heck out of them. The game can support someone playing Tripticon, a giant godzilla, while someone else is a tiny Mini-Con on their shoulder. Now design your show around that and it would be a spectacle just to see what your players could do with their cool, transforming, modded toys! ;)
Make this a game Dimension 20, I know it will be awesome!
RPGs are an inherently collaborative medium. Often the GM will be put in the position of the authority to shape the world and direct how it responds to players' actions, but that doesn't strictly need to be the case. In Fellowship there is a clear distinction in who can Command Lore about various things, usually giving Players the control over the lore surrounding their people (so an Elf character Commands who elves are in the setting, whether they are pixies, aliens or what have you). While this approach might not be useful in all games (such as games with established lore, like Star Wars), you can still incorporate the players' creativity in how the world works on a smaller level.
In our lengthy Princes of the Universe Exalted campaign we ran into an interesting situation. My character wanted to unite the setting's dysfunctional bureaucratic heaven to work for our characters. To that end, I suggested the character would go on a quest to find an artefact, the Crown of Thunders, and use it as a symbol to rally the bickering gods. The Crown had an important symbolic meaning to the gods and the Exalts, but it wasn't a concrete "this crown makes you a ruler of the heaven and solves your issue" thing. As such, some other players dismissed the idea, but the GM rolled with it without hesitation, and even the various NPCs started reinforcing the idea soon after. It was a nice way of approaching problem solving in RPGs - a player's idea becomes a solution to the problem by the dint of player suggesting it as a solution.
Sol Invictus giving Queen Merela the Crown of Thunders and establishing the Creation Ruling Mandate
While this might be a no-brainer for some people, it's an approach that I don't see mentioned in too many RPGs or adventure modules - you should be aiming to use players' ideas on how things should work in your game. They might miss hints or clues on how some adventure wants them to approach a problem, not know some part of the setting their character might know, or in general not be in the same mindset as the GM. That shouldn't stop them from suggesting how things should be. You don't need to roll with every single thing, but it's definitely a good conversation starter.
As Fellowship hints, the GM is there to create problems for the players to solve. If they were to create solutions, you would either run into GM-PCs that have the foresight given to them by reading the script, or else they might be forcing the players to figure out their moon logic to solve a problem the way they envisioned. Either solution wouldn't be good. Since you can't expect the players to come up with the same ideas as the GM, then of course you need to allow for some leeway in how things can be solved, how the world will react and so on.
You should be leaning into those ideas as a GM - not only asking your players what they want to do, but also what they want to accomplish with their actions. There is a difference between "I want to beat the guard up" and "I want to beat the guard up to rally the common people to storm the bastille with me" - one sounds like the combat is the end-point, while in the others the violence is a means to an end that might not be clear if it's not spelled out explicitly.
By talking about the desired outcomes you can set the correct expectations and let the players know if their actions won't have the desired outcome. It's best to be up-front about such things than to let players go goblin brain down a dead end. Sometimes that can be a "no", sometimes that can be a compromise ("if you beat this guard, that will work in your favour for convincing the people to rise up"), and sometimes it can lead to some different ideas being worked out ("maybe if you rally the people first and come in as a mob, the guards will actually join your just cause?").
Conclusions
Try to incorporate your player ideas into the game - you are here to create the story together, and it's good when the world conforms narratively to the player actions and ideas (whether that's reinforcing it, or fighting back against it in a satisfying way ("hey, would you want the system to try crushing you and throwing you in jail for daring to fight the guard to show how the government will oppress you, making your character a martyr?")). Just saying something "won't work" without offering some alternatives isn't as fun as championing even some wacky ideas.
