Not an adventure
This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war. —All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
Uncertainty is not, in most circumstances, a good thing… But the reality is that we are faced with uncertainty throughout our lives—and that much of our effort is devoted to managing and ameliorating that uncertainty. Is it any wonder, then, that we have taken this aspect of our lives, and transformed it culturally, made a series of elaborate constructs that subject us to uncertainty—but in a fictive and nonthreatening way? —Uncertainty in Games by Greg Costikyan
I.
As I put the finishing touches on the next (and final?) version of Ruins & Rogues, I've been working on a system of attack tags. The current list of tags is as follows:
- Blast: Strikes all targets in whatever area of effect the GM deems reasonable.
- Body: Strikes all targets that the attacker moves into or otherwise touches during its turn.
- Drain: Target gains no XP at the end of this session. If Level 4, target must retire.
- Heavy: Attack costs two actions: one to ready the attack and one to attack next turn.
- Stun: Target takes 1 damage if it moves and 1 damage if it acts on its next turn.
Monster damage is static (that is, non-random) and attacks can have multiple tags. A dragon's fire breath attack, for example, might be "6 heavy blast"; a gelatinous cube's touch might be "3 body stun," and so on. My intent is to build a kind of language that adventure designers can use to mix up encounters.
The OSR has more or less settled on two existing languages for this purpose: B/X D&D and Mark of the Odd. Of the two, I prefer Mark of the Odd, but I don't like its swingy, roll-under attribute pools. Hence, my new system.
II.
Dungeon-crawling is traditionally a resource-management game. Combat encounters wear down your Hit Points (HP), and when you run out of HP, you're either dead or injured.
Matt Colville once made a comment that the HP system is not how humans work, but how we wish we worked. I'm not sure I wish I had Hit Points in real life, but I do think HP is emblematic of the fantasy that D&D delivers.
People like to describe old-school D&D as bleak — and sure, at level 1, a lot of things can kill you in one hit. But even then, HP provides a facade of fairness. When you take damage and it reduces you to 0 HP, it feels deserved in a way that death by combat never does in real life.
Furthermore, HP sanitizes the aftermath of violence. By default, you either have HP and you're alive or you have no HP and you're dead. Where injury rules exist, they tend to apply only to player characters. Even then, you might lose an eye or even an arm, but you won't be forced to retire.
The overall effect of the HP system is to reduce violence to a sort of cartoon. People fight and die, but there's no mess to it. There's nothing brutal or random about it. It's fun. And isn't that the point?
III.
World War I was not an adventure. Remarque responded by writing about what the war was; Tolkien responded by writing about what the war wasn't. Fantasy has been about what the modern world is not ever since.
It's healthy, I think, to wish the world was different. It's healthy to play games with your friends. It's okay to pretend the world is simpler than it is for a little while. It's okay to have fun.
But as an artist, I can't help but think to myself: do I want to be more like Tolkien or more like Remarque? And I don't have a clear answer.
The world is falling deeper and deeper into crisis. The horrors of World War I and World War II are back. We need damning, realistic art that exposes reality and rouses action now more than ever.
But games are how I cope with and escape from the world. Games restore my energy so that I can go back into the world and fight for change. And I can't help that I love making games and I love playing games.
IV.
Maybe there are ways to make games that are both escapist and realistic. I don't mean to imply that The Lord of the Rings has no realistic elements. The Once and Future King is another classic fantasy novel deeply concerned with modern reality.
I know of two NSR-adjacent RPGs that are trying to square this circle. FIST is a cartoony action game, but it wants to support exploration of real issues. To quote from the rulebook:
We're being grim, gritty, and serious as a joke—but the joke we're telling is dead serious. ... Sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and other forms of genre fiction have always been means of exploring social concepts through a symbolic and aesthetically entertaining lens.
I'm less familiar with ECO MOFOS!!, but it also seems to be trying to address real issues within an adventure game. Another Crab's Treasure was my favorite video game of 2024, and that was a soulslike about pollution and capitalism.
I haven't run FIST enough to know if this approach will work on me. It's no substitute for realistic art, but it might make for more satisfying games.
V.
The other option that's always dangling over my head is to move on from games and write poetry or fiction instead.
I have been talking about moving on from D&D for well over a year now, but the problems I blog about always seem to resolve themselves before I can make up my mind to move on. A few weeks later, I discover another problem, and the cycle begins anew.
I like to think I could keep making games and write on the side, but I don't know if I have it in me to juggle more than one creative hobby at a time.
Another problem: I'm unemployed and disabled such that in-person work is extremely draining for me. Game design is one of the only things I have a lot of experience doing that isn't draining. So, as difficult as making money in TTRPGs is, my experience in this field is the best thing on my resume.
I knew how to code in high school, but I got so frustrated making video games that I threw all my knowledge and contacts from the indie games scene away. I don't want to make the same mistake again.