Hello again, I got myself thinking a lot about this theme and came up with some conclusions. Having in mind that I don’t live in a “first world” country, I’m not a late 70s grognard, but I’m (or I’m getting) old. I think that all old school gaming experience or at least first RPGS experiences can be valid and maybe should be discussed.
This came to my mind because my son told me (and for this I’m very proud) that he is playing RPGs at school during breaks. I, of course, asked him about the system and got the best answer I could imagine. He said: “we are “flipping” a erase, one side is yes and the other is no. And that’s all the outcome we need”. Besides being very proud, it filled me with hope to share a lifetime hobby with him (we are not playing oftenly), in addition a nostalgia and good memories came immediately to my mind. This immediately transported me to my teenage school years, and how we used to craft with paper and rubber: dice, minis and shit, and of course our own, unbalanced, goofy and (no I can tell) awesome systems/platyles.
From this and other experiences I will list some topics to summarize:
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Inexperienced and naive game design can lead to an interesting aesthetic.
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Games based on collective construction and narrative, the system does not need to be complex, with very simple resolutions. The plot is much more important.
After that initial, preliminary experience, we of course started to read rules and setting books that were available in, as I said, a third world country, in an age without internet for teenagers where the English language was a barrier.
There were few translated RPGs books, the ones I liked most and that were more available to me were the Fighting Fantasy books. Especially Dungonner, and this book my friends , is maybe the reason I’m writing this post. What I liked about it was the on the fly system, very well written, and of course the step by step adventure for noob game masters, and how the system expands after the first experience and shit. The system (although it is not open licensed) is very hackable and homebrews came spontaneously.
What I liked about this books was:
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It was really friendly for new game masters and players.
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The system was rad, and very hackable.
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Magic system is based on HP loss (my favorite type until nowadays).
The exploration of other systems was a natural path, but as brazilian tenneargers english was I said, short of a barrier. We faced the language and I can tell that it became fuel to improv and emergent narrative. As we read new systems and mostly modules/adventures, the things we didn’t fully understand become: rulings and improvisation for the miss understood rules and descriptions respectively.
I written about this in my dungeon module called skull cave, here are some highlights:
“The way I started playing and running RPGs was peculiar. Most modules and systems were not written in my native language, and I was still learning English. Under the fog of a misunderstood language, some things needed to be invented, reinterpreted, and heavily improvised!
Is this the right way to play?
Maybe? You can judge! I will try to explain why I learned to play this way. Generally, what was going on when I played was a collective construction of history, dynamics, etc. The characters would intertwine in the narrative and build the background alongside the gaps in the story. Things slowly started to make more sense, and the characters became more relevant as the sessions went on. This playstyle can be summarized or defined with some buzzwords you might know, like emergent narrative and play agency (among many others).”
“We barely understood the game we were playing as written down, so we fleshed it out with what made sense to us. Failed attack rolls didn’t mean that a monster’s armor blocked the hit. It meant the blow resonated extremely loudly in the opponent’s armor and drew more opponents’ attention. Skill check failures when using a rogue’s kit didn’t mean you couldn’t open the chest. It triggered a trap that reverses the gravity of the room! This might sound like good dramatic improvisation to most GMs and players. Still, it wasn’t something we added on top of understanding the rules: it was the only way we could make sense of these games we so desperately wanted to play. Learning player-oriented, emergent narrative play was, for us, the result of simply not understanding how many and what types of monsters, traps, and secret passages were described in that dungeon. It was a playstyle born of necessity.”
So yes, I guess this can be new for some people on global north, but the lessons we got from all of this are:
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Minimal and more well and clearly written rules and descriptions could be good.
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Improvisations are necessary even for heavily prep games, and it’s not an exclusively GM task.
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Ruling and improvisation gaps are ok or even necessary for games and modules.
Photocopied games were a reality here, and for some reason Rolemaster was very common and broadly played. Wow, that escalated quickly!!! As we became more fluent in english, and for the availability of photocopied copies of the game, that was the next experience.
If you don’t know Rolemaster well, I will summarize it in some words: crunch, tables, d100% roll over system, medieval fantasy settings, hundreds of compendiums.
From this we learned to chill out, play a heavy math and slow system. But from this game we learned the tables are really cool, even resolutions tables, random encounters, generators tables are fuel to improve and really enhance creativity .
So :
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Tables are good.
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Not all games have to be fast and kind of frantic.
These are my experiences and I see that through them the form of the game as I play to this day has been shaped. Much more was incorporated and I can talk about it later. Something that I think could be highlighted is how days and even months of campaigns were based on exploring the wilderness through random tables, leading to plots, bounds and theories created from that.
I would be very happy to read or hear other experiences here or on any channel you want to share, thanks for reading this far!
Until later,
Lucas Rolim.
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