Matt Horam

Adjust Flavour to Taste

2019-03-27T00:00:00+00:00

Adjust Flavour to Taste

At the risk of seeming like a Hot Take™, this post (not deliberately provocative by any measure) is a means for me to tease out some thoughts running through my head today. If it also helps you explore similar lines, or inspires something different, I hope you have fun!

This morning, I had just completed the print files for the official release of Fledglings (mentioned here previously). The game is very much a niche thing, an RPG intro for kids and their guardians to bridge the gap between those who have never played a fantasy adventure game and those ready to wrestle with more complex/granular rulesets. It came about because I run adventures for kids each Winter at Ettin Con, and have been striving to find a really basic, accessible game for the very young.

As soon as I saved the files, I noticed that game design legend Avery Alder had put out a call on twitter for people to let her know of any games they’d designed using her #BelongingOutsideBelonging system, which she developed for Dream Askew (and Dream Apart by Benjamin Rosenbaum) under the gorgeous slogan “No Dice, No Masters”. For a helpful run-down on the concept, Nora Blake posted this, and I am grateful for the insight. Essentially:

Setting elements (the game world and its supporting, non-protagonist inhabitants) are rotated in and out of the hands of players whose characters aren’t currently interacting with them
Dice are replaced by an economy of tokens which players earn through vulnerable actions, and spend on powerful actions.
Story centres around a marginalised community who are trying to live just outside society.

I’d been curious about the system after the DA//DA split release because I’m deep in the throes of a gm-less tangent right now, where what I currently crave from my game sessions so badly is for everyone to be equal contributors, no-one needing to consider themselves anything less or more than a fellow player. I’ve been angling toward this ideal for years, which is why I was so glad to discover Ironsworn’s co-op mode, and the limitations of terms/concepts like “Non-Player Character” have lead to loud and unhealthy conversations on the internet of late, through no fault of those interrogating those assumptions. For the record, I consider anyone at the table, involved in playing a game, a “player”. This includes traditional Dungeon/Game Masters in hierarchical games. Doing the extra work of prep, adjudication or supporting characterisation doesn’t make them more or less of a player, it just makes them busy and tired. I am too busy, and too tired, and I hunger to play a protagonist alongside everyone else at my tables.

The reply to Avery’s call which caught my eye was Before the Spire Falls, a beautifully queer-flavoured Witch Fellowship of the Neverending Story game. It’s Pay-What-You-Want, and worth much more than that, but it allowed me to get a better idea of the framework without buying DA//DA during Tight Budget 2019. I think that Avery and Benjamin’s games look great and vital, but my hesitation comes from the fact that I’m a privileged white CIShet male athiest from a catholic upbringing, and apart from already having purchased other games about the communities/identities which I systemically oppress, and never finding the nerve or the time to run them properly, I’m pretty sure I don’t always have the right, let alone the direct motivation, to explore those themes at my table at the present moment. To be clear, though: these games are rich and crucial, and if you can support them through purchase or play or both, please do it at every opportunity.

So I’m reading Before the Spire Falls and thinking to myself “Why the heck didn’t I use this system for Fledglings? The token-based economy is simpler to teach than dice, the collaborative nature removes the barrier of learning how to run a game like a trad GM, and characters who are young, unqualified people are essentially a marginalised community, living beneath the shadow of their elders”. I briefly contemplate destroying my game (which is just another mini-hack of World of Dungeons, essentially) and starting over. Two things hold me back, though. I’m going to talk about them now!

Disclaimer: I am a self-taught, poorly-educated private-school dropout with a failing memory. I live just above the Dunning-Kruger line, so I can recognise the academic smarts and thorough analysis all around me in this scene, from the likes of the Bakers, Ash McAllan, Sidney Icarus, the Storybrewers, and many more. The indie RPG scene is crammed full of clever people who understand mechanics and narrative in ways I cannot be bothered to comprehend, because I am old and tired. I recommend you read anything any of them have to say if you are looking for valuable insight.

Controlled Risk

The first thing which Belonging Outside Belonging does, by shifting to a token-based action economy (and ditching the GM), defines the safe borders of a story you choose to tell together. Collectively, as players, you all decide (during play) when you are ready for bad luck, poor choices or vulnerability to affect your character. You invite negative events in exchange for the power to create positive ones, and so the unknown elements of chaotically poor dice rolls or unexpected GM intrusions are banished. It’s great in a similar way to how Fall of Magic just invites you to tell a story, the die rolls softly hand you prompts or thematic outcomes without the burden of unescapable hard consequences. No-one will ever tell you that your character died, or that death is final. You choose when to struggle, and when to triumph. If your goal is to explore a story where you know it will be okay if you need it to be, the threats of a traditional RPG are no longer there to stop you telling that story, in your own way, at your own pace.

This is important, and needed, in the world. It could’ve worked for Fledglings because it’s especially helpful to lay out safe boundaries for very young players. They tend to struggle more with character failure or death because they’re still learning to deal with personal failure and the steady approach of death in the real world around them.

Here’s where I come in. I am not marginalised, and crave a degree of risk. When I play a game, I hope that something will surprise me beyond my control. I want stories where it went right without me ensuring it could, and stories where things went wrong no matter how hard I tried to fix it. I am not the target market for a perfect balance of hardship and happy endings.

A friend and I have been enjoying BELOW of late, and it’s an exhausting game by nature. He lamented today that there isn’t a more casual version of it so we could enjoy its world without constantly being punished for trying to survive it. I get that feel, it’s such a tough slider to adjust.

Reading The Tea Dragon Society last night reassured me that even if a story is so much gayer than me, or softer in its narrative than the Action-Packed Eighties which I stewed in, it’s lovely to watch, it’s a treasure to share, and someone else needs it more than me. I don’t need to be the target market for these things and they have value beyond what I can truly appreciate first-hand from the pale and unfortunately phallic ivory tower of the eternal patriarchy.

The point I’m dancing around here is that it’s not the right tool for me, but I want you to know it’s a bloody awesome tool. If you want to dance that way, shake it until it falls off, and I will applaud from the sidelines! Let me know if your band needs a drummer.

Integration

Hashtag-BoB wants to tell stories of maginalised communities trying to live outside. This is good. Those communities must survive, they must usually do that outside because [1] the mainstream typically oppresses/rejects/suppresses them, and [2] they are just different, no amount of welcome from a society changes the beautiful, wonderful ways someone might feel distinct and special, and seek out kindred spirits who understand their internal and systemic struggles. Community is key!

In terms of Fledglings, the characters are actively seeking approval and acceptance from elder society, something which groups of marginalised adults don’t technically need. The marginalised need to become strong in/among themselves, ready to survive without/despite the mainstream, and are right to crave acknowledgement or naturally desire respect/acceptance, but let’s be clear: If the mainstream society rejects a community, callously, unjustifiably? That splinter community is better off on their own. Forget those jerks in the Capital.

Similarly, if my little game is about this parallel, but with a coda of everyone coming together and exploring the world in their own ways? It shouldn’t use Belonging Outside Belonging, because that story is being told better by more interesting people than me. Instead, the characters will journey inward from the outskirts, and my system will stay within the old traditional walls, applauding the construction of strange-and-grander civilisations it can glimpse by stretching on tip-toe behind them.

Role-Playing Games for Kids

2019-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

Role-Playing Games for Kids

The combination of tweets like this and Google+ communities with ~2k members about to be deleted lead me to curating Yet Another List of RPGs for Children. Now that we’re all going to be Blogger Refugees again, I can keep coming back to this little markdown file on my laptop and add things as they arise or resurface in my memory.

Hero Kids, by (fellow Australian) Justin Halliday is the first kid-centric fantasy RPG most people hear about nowadays, and with good reason. It is, from the lens of tactical D&D, a great intro to that style of play.
The first cousin of that which I ever found on the web was the card-based Adventure Maximus.
If your kids want to have more freedom than a single genre, Monte Cook games made a big splash with their two kickstarters for the genreless imaginary mashup of No Thank You, Evil!
Similarly, Amazing Tales has multiple options in terms of setting.
If you want cute little fuzzy characters but your kids aren’t able to handle the complexity of Mouse Guard, maybe you’d like to try something like The Woodlands for a more story-driven Redwall-esque tale, or even Michtim.
The Magical Land of Yeld was born out of the Modest Medusa comics, and similarly, you might enjoy Sidekick Quests, from the eponymous comic!
If you’re playing with fans of My Little Pony, maybe try Tails of Equestria.
Fall of Magic is a beautiful game for any age, the emphasis is on story and characterisation, not at all on any kind of tactical combat. A digital version is also available.
Wildlings might scratch your Lookouts itch, but in a few months, I’ll be releasing my free hack to play a kidventure with the Wardlings miniatures - see wave 1, wave 2.
For super-simple systems, you can ditch the dice entirely and flip coins in FlipTales.
Instant RPG is a free RPG which fits on a business card, is diceless, paperless, and practically ageless!

Oh, and suggestions are welcome, so if you know something I don’t, please let me know in the comments. Thanks!

PS: I totally forgot about those two official Wizards mini D&D games for youngsters.

Itching to Publish?

2019-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

Itching to Publish?

For those who aren’t familiar, itch.io is an indie games marketplace, designed for video games, but just as useful for other digital releases, like tabletop/print-and-play games.

There’s been a huge surge in uploads of physical games since the publication of DC’s overdue call-to-arms for tabletop game designers to give the platform a try, and they’re right, the monoculture of OneBookShelf (DriveThruRPG, DM’s Guild, and other faces of the OBS shopfront) is starting to hurt the indie scene as much as it has helped it over the years. Itch is certainly easier to use on both sides (designer and consumer), and they take a much smaller cut of the sale.

Helping @WanderingGM publish Instant RPG the other day was what motivated me to do more on the platform. I had put our Tiny D&D business cards up as free-or-donate before, but had many #NaGaDeMon files sitting around since November 2018, and decided to quietly release my Scales & Scoundrels hack of Ironsworn’s quests-and-resources model, Secret Dragons. It sold a copy this morning! Whoo, virtual dollar!

I have a bunch of other tiny hacks which I might put onto the site, just to see if anyone likes them. I’ll try to abort any design which develops into something too frighteningly unoriginal, but it’s funny how often I’ll get a hundred words into a design only to realise that either Blades in the Dark did it better, or I’m just unconsciously re-writing Burning Wheel, then file it in the Windows Folder of Despair. I’m still working on the Wardlings intro game to release after this Winter’s Ettin Con. I’d love to sell (and potentially expand) it but I’m guessing that WizKids would prefer me to rename it, even if it’s the only game specifically devised for that miniature line. I can understand that, but I keep wanting impossible things anyway.

Anyway, if you weren’t already thinking about getting your stuff out there, or you were intimidated by the complexity of submitting to DTRPG, maybe give itch a go. I’d love to add more stuff to my private and public collections of creative games on the site.

Revising Wardlings

2019-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

Whittling down the Whatlings?

Inspired by the Lookouts comics, the Wildlings RPG and the Wardlings miniatures, I ran an all-ages one-shot at Ettin Con last year. The players were kids and their parents, so the ages ran from single digits to late thirties (not counting the 41yo GM). I opted for a custom ruleset to get the simplicity & tone just right, and it worked fairly well, but if I’m going to run another one-shot to utilise the second wave of minis, I need to make some adjustments (and I might as well fix a bunch of things while I’m there).

Pets

There are six new spirit companions (natural or magical pets) which I needed to add to the class sheets, and some iconography for the same. I usually grab/manipulate images from game-icons.net for their clarity and simplicity. The second wave of minis adds a winged cat, stone golem, monkey, wolf, falcon and imp. Other than using a tiger for the cat (the cat icon was a little too passive, I wanted something more exciting), all of those were easy to find.

Difficulty

The session was a bit too easy (thanks for the feedback, players!) so I bothered to look at the probability for the dice pool I’d based on John Harper’s OneSevenDesign work. I’d erred on the side of safety for the young players, but three dice as a maximum pool is safe enough, and it took a session for me to discover that. I decided to further simplify the character sheet along with these rules, so that you rolled one die for any risk, plus one or two more if you had a skill, assistance, or both. Equipment was now simply for fictional positioning (enabling actions which would be impossible without), and I removed the safety net of goblin’s performing heroic self-sacrifice to protect the characters. Next, I changed the pets to have 3hp, like each character, and that HP could be spent, one for one, to raise the result of the highest die on a roll. Lethality was still lessened by the text describing exhaustion for either pet or character.

Patches

The original character sheet had lots of patches, some round and some hexagonal, but this version would have fewer, and keep them all round (cutting hexes is slow, velcro dots are already round). The players enjoy sticking the patches onto their sheets but I learned back in 2016 (running Heroes in Trouble, another proto-kid-rpg) that glue sticks at the table are a fiddly time-suck which no-one needs.

Finishing Touches

I started to wonder if this is worth cleaning up to release for other people to use. The Wardlings minis are great but even games like Hero Kids don’t really provide the support they deserve, and I want to make it easy for anyone at the convention to run a session with them as part of our RPG asset library. The class icons, borrowed from Dungeon World, are proprietary and somewhat unintuitive, especially for beginners. I would love to have clearly recognisable symbols for the classes which a newcomer would understand, but couldn’t find anything that sang to me. I’m currently toying with a mashup of icons-within-hero-sillhouette (hello Adobe Illustrator) and will see if that works for both players and my aesthetic.

I’d also like to revisit the backpack image for the character sheet. When I say “like to”, I mean “I’m not sure if I’m still satisfied with the scratchpunk style of hasty vectors but I am dreading the effort to start over and just wish I was a better visual artist” but you get the idea. It’s not thrilling me today, and I wish it would, so that might mean renewed effort and different approaches.

Next, the Adventure and Treasures

Once all this is done, I’ll need to write the adventure which has been brewing in my head, maybe a template for future ones (so others can write their own) and determine new magic items to help the characters without making things too easy. That said, I still think that the clever use of a magic item in the last session totally deserved to circumvent the final challenge!

I’ll try to add more images to this post if I get the chance.

Blogging is Dead

2019-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

Here’s a test post to get the ball rolling. Current status: between bands. House extensions have begun and we hope to have a comfortable space for all by the middle of the year. My physical form is causing problems, we are in a diagnostic phase. It has been five months since the last convention and will be another seven before we have another. If you want to read more about the lattermost subject, please visit https://EttinCon.org/blog.

One of the other reasons for cobbling another blog together (besides Google Plus being doomed) is that since National Game Design Month (NaGaDeMon) 2018, I have typed about 10,000 words across more than half a dozen tabletop game projects, without bothering to share them with the world. If I do share them, it might be here, in a mixture of design notes, drafts and layout ideas, or possibly released as fundraising/freebie products over on itch.io.

PS: I’m living in a near-constant flux between terror and exhaustion, but we only have ourselves to blame, in the end. I’d like to apologise to the Earth on behalf of my ancestors, and to our children on behalf of everyone.

Ettin Con

2015-07-18T00:00:00+00:00

2015 Onwards: Ettin Con is a gaming convention I started in the Blue Mountains of NSW. Up to twice a year, we host up to 300 people for up to twelve hours per day to play board games, card games, role-playing games and video games. We had to go virtual during the plague, obviously. Here’s to a glorious future.

Cities of the Red Night

2007-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

2007 - 2011: Cities of the Red Night were a band I wrote/played/sang with. We recorded one EP and one single, and I loved them very much.

Mritak by Cities of the Red Night The Forthcoming EP by Cities of the Red Night

ESN

1998-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

1998 - 2001: ESN were a band I toured/wrote/played/sang with. We played live on the radio, got some airplay, recorded two EPs, one LP and a bunch of b-sides. At our peak, we rotated lead vocals to varying success. It was an amazing experience. My favourite tracks were Cello and Magnetic Drift, but there’s a moment in Ultimate Emo which was the greatest jam synchronicity of my life.

Actual Size by ESN

Kiln

1996-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

1996 - 1997: Kiln were a band I wrote and played with. We never really managed to find a suitable singer, or record the other two-thirds of our set, but it was lots of fun while it lasted. We played a single 45-minute song made up of nine movements, the first three available at the link. My favourite was the fourth movement.

Part 1 of 3 by Kiln96