On Playtesting, Lovecraft Releases, Moving Away from Retro-Clones

Lots of good stuff on the blogs lately. Of course I must be a bad businessman and actually have opinions on things. And express them.

First, playtesting.

If something goes to print and you accept money for it, it should be playtested.

But blog posts? Whatever for? Blogs are for throwing ideas around, not for presenting Professional Product. I think the same applies to "fanzines," and may be how the term signifies "idea bank!" even if the final result is as swanky-looking as Fight On!.

The thing is though, what does playtesting mean? In more mechanically advanced games and systems, rigorous testing to make sure things work is important. In games where balance is important, you really need to be rigorous in figuring things out if you're going to be sure that a game does what it says it will. If you proclaim there is a right way for a game, then everything you do has to follow that way and unintended consequences are bad.

In looser games where things blowing up and the entire session going downhill on a bad die roll is not undesirable, playtesting is done for a different purpose. What one group does in a more open game will not be representative of a damn thing that is possible. Basically, as long as it's possible for a group to survive the adventure while experiencing all the major bits, and it's possible for them to die along the way, as far as I'm concerned the adventure's good balance-wise.

And I have to point out, I've run Death Frost Doom a bunch of times. All that playing and enjoyment of the module didn't help Alexis enjoy it, now did it?

What I've found in the value of playtesting adventure material is in determining that all necessary expository material is included. Making sure the relationships between different elements in the adventure are explained so that the purchaser, without benefit of contact with the author, can run the darn thing in the spirit it was intended. I've seen actual play reports of most of my work that reinforces that it can do what I intend it to do without my being there. Success!

Confession: You know that Purple Lotus in Death Frost Doom with the random effects? Before publishing (and after publishing and probably until the end of time) not every one of those effects had happened in play. :P

Seriously though. There's the original D&D which is damn near incomprehensible as a stand-alone product that didn't even include essential rules and upgrades being played at the time of its release, and that created this entire hobby. There's AD&D1e core, which had a ton of stuff which really doesn't work well in play and which even the attributed author didn't use or in some cases even want in there, and people have played that just fine for over 30 years. But then there's Unearthed Arcana, which was full of wonky ill-advised shit that ruined campaigns worldwide, and the Dungeoneer and Wilderness Survival Guides which were full of wonderful detail that you can tell were formulated in a lab without ever coming into contact with an actual game table.

Somewhere in there is a mixed message, and the truth, about the importance of playtesting.

Labyrinth Lord has a Lovecraft thing coming out.

I think I might have dodged a bullet. Lovecraft has a heavy influence on Weird Fantasy Role-Playing, obviously. but to me "Lovecraft" and "Cthulhu" are not the same thing. At conventions when talking about the game I've tried to play down the tentacles, because tentacles are not what I'm pushing. Remember my micro-rant here.

I'm going to get Realms of Crawling Chaos. I'm willing to bet money (which is what purchasing a gaming book is, really) that parts of it will end up in my campaign (especially appropriately-themed spells). But it looks to really take Lovecraft elements and put them directly into the game. It's a different approach than I'd take, and I'm glad for the difference. There is a forthcoming (how soon?) Swords Against the Outer Dark that I'm not so clear on as far as tone and what it will deliver. My worry is that people will still put Weird Fantasy Role-Playing into the same mental space as these products, because being different is important. The strength of Weird Fantasy Role-Playing is that you already know how to play, it's all very familiar, but it can deliver a different play experience than the other simulacra or the games they emulate.

(Yeah, Carcosa has Cthulhu & Co, but to me they aren't the selling point or defining setting element.)

Which brings us to the big one.

Moving Away from the Retro-Clones (with other good talk here and here and here).

Odd that there seems to be a little surge in "Why don't we have anything new?" talk in the OSR, which was built on the rejection of new things and the desire to have new things which directly recalled what we already knew we liked.

Look, I don't want mechanical innovation. I might switch around spells on a list and screw around with things that nobody used or never worked right (encumbrance, wrestling), but my game looks the way it does because there is a skeleton of what I want in a game that's been out there for ages and ages and that's that. Game over.

Goodman's DCC game advertising seems to have spurred the discussion. Goodman has released some great things (Dungeon Alphabet, Creature Generator, Points of Light), but the Dungeon Crawl Classics? That whole brand? Remember their marketing:

Remember the good old days, when adventures were underground, NPCs were there to be killed, and the finale of every dungeon was the dragon on the 20th level? Those days are back. Dungeon Crawl Classics don't waste your time with long-winded speeches, weird campaign settings, or NPCs who aren't meant to be killed.

That's what the DCC name and brand still means to me. Not how I play at all.

Their self-description of the rules engine for their new game?

Rules Set: DCC RPG, an OGL system that cross-breeds Appendix N with a streamlined version of 3E.

3e is what made me hostile to the "D&D" brand, so obviously this game isn't for me. Even if it does create discussion.

And then there's the Appendix N thing.

It goes back to "What is this thing we're doing?" Is it a set of rules? Or inspirations?

Things need to be different in order to find their own audience. With nobody pushing OSRIC (if OSRIC had been released as an in-print, for-profit concern in 2006 this discussion wouldn't exist in meaningful form - OSRIC would own old-school by such a margin that there'd be zero incentive to bring anything else to market), Swords & Wizardry moving closer to 1e with the Complete edition makes sense, and it's a move that benefits both S&W "prime" and "White Box" as it makes them different. Labyrinth Lord's core game is now comfortably between the two (and keeps chugging along as probably by far the most successful of the simulacra; wasn't it Proctor who first saw the value in wider distribution back in 07 or so, unfortunately going through Key20 at the time?).

Those games have the advantage of being able to say "This is the game that's been around forever." They all present the same thing in different ways. The spells, the monsters, the magic items, the implied setting. The rules vary bit by bit, but the trappings are the same. I think the clones are both necessary and awesome, but I certainly understand that another "pure" clone isn't necessary.

There is still room for additional things building on that familiar base. Things that change the trappings, that deliver a different feel and experience, without changing the rules skeleton. Obviously I feel this way! The success of these additional things will be due not to pure originality, but in how well they are presented (hopefully a love for publishing that matches a love for writing will make a difference here...) and how well they straddle the line between being different and still being familiar.

Creativity will help there.

But I'll say it plainly:

Fuck originality.

Give me interesting and well-done things that I can use for my existing campaign.

We're not making fine art here, we're making game-play aids. Too much originality reduces general usability. The imagination should be sparked more on the consumer's end than on the producer's end, really. It's why you make adventures with no definite "end encounter" or victory conditions, why you make rules without strict expectations of the progress of play.

I happen to think the cross-compatibility of this scene is its strength, the common understandings of the fanbase is the only thing that makes the OSR anything worth a damn in the first place, and anything that moves outside of those elements might as well be 4e or FUDGE for all I'm going to care. It's why I change only certain things and leave the rest alone.

The perfect example:

The Dungeon Alphabet is probably the most universally well-received (and commercially successful) thing that anyone in the OSR has produced, and it deserves every accolade it receives. Every single last damn one of us can pick up that book and get inspired and make our game better. It's creative as hell.

But is there a single original element in the whole thing? I say no. The whole thing celebrates the well-worn and familiar elements of dungeon crawling. By its positioning the dungeon as a vibrant and worthwhile gaming environment in many ways it discourages pure originality by keeping people well satisfied with the original baseline gameplay assumptions.

And that's fine by me.