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.