DB

The reason why I got into indie RPGs is not just because of the OGL fiasco. I discussed this in my Perfect Game thing. I am always looking for systems and tools that will help my players feel more comfortable at the table. Whether that is taking improv classes to be able to get them better immersed into a world, or if that’s taking acting classes to make them feel that characters they interact with are more real…I would like–no–I would love for my players and future players to feel like they’re in the world. I love the idea of fully immersing into something…losing yourself…and then having the permission to create the stories you have never seen. Yeah. This is totally, just discussed in my first post, but the thing that I like about indie RPGs is that there is a wide birth of types of rules.

Now, there is something to say about wonderful engines that games can be made from. I’m thinking about Powered by the Apocalypse, Forged in the Dark, Cortex Prime (sort of), and the Belonging Outside Belonging game engines. There is something wonderful about being able to find the rules for the type of game or the type of experience that you want to convey, and then just ship it with all the wonderful flavors that you need to use.

So, in the topic of in the RPGs, the experiences that I want my players to have varies through the whole spectrum of games and experiences. I want to be able to experience crunchy battle. I want them to feel epic with a rule book and a product that exemplifies, that sort of experience: creepy, weird, heroic. And also, usually, some types of rules systems make you feel awesome in a specific genre.

When you play a fighting games, you feel like a beast because your character is doing sick combos while the other character is getting hit. It is stunning. Visually gorgeous. Mechanically difficult. Is that what makes a fighting game stunning?

Is it always visual sparkles, and mechanical difficulty that make the experience of a game enjoyable? For some people, their preferred visual presentation changes. Some people enjoy a realistic style. Some people enjoy a cartoon, or an anime style. Some people prefer mechanically challenging fighting games. This means that not everyone can do the same combos, or has access to the same skill set, for it is physically hard to reliably recreate the most powerful combos. Does this cater towards the mechanically trained player? What about the player that likes the strategy of combat?

That’s just fighting games. Let’s talk about video games in general. There’s lots of games where you beat up another character. Sometimes you beat them with guns: first person shooters or third person shooters. Some, provide the fantasy of you being an expert marksman, besting someone else by gunning them down. It feels good…but why? What element of the shooting game feels best to you?

How does your character handle? How do the gun sound? How do they look? What is the movement bike? That sort of thing.

So when I think of the experiences I want for my players to have, I think usually of the genre of world or story that they want to tell. Once, I attempted to have a Monster Hunter (the Capcom video game) type of game in D&D 5E.

It wasn’t that great. What I attempted to do was…I just had very thematic monsters. It was going to be combat heavy. When I thought of monster hunter, I thought of fighting monsters and crafting stuff. The mechanical combat of dodge rolling and striking in Monster Hunter wasn’t something I was sure I could replicate in D&D 5E. It was specifically the kill and loot things, and then craft things gameplay loop that I thought I could replicate in D&D. So, that’s what I based my Monster Hunter-like campaign around. D&D as a ruleset doesn’t have a looting and crafting gameplay loop by default. So, I just slap some stuff on and I was good to go.

I don’t know yet what will make a game good, but I do my best to make it a fun game for my players. I lift and place ideas from video games into my tabletop RPGs. I hear about fun house rules, and I place them in my games. I ask my players what they want, and I slap those things on and hope for the best. That was my experience with trying to make D&D fit for everything.

I realized eventually that there were other games that had rules that helped encourage certain moods and experiences. In the same way that a fighting game feels different than a shooting game, their packaging, presentation, controls, and rules made for a different experience. Dread showed this to me. Call of Cthulhu showed this to me. Powered by the Apocalypse showed this to me. Belonging Outside Belonging showed this to me.

Indie games showed me that I don’t have to hack and saw together my games for the experiences I wanted to bring to my tables. Sometimes, those answers were already out there.

And for a few of those stories, I’m not sure if the game exists yet. I’ve been experimenting…writing…and hey. Maybe I’ll join the fray of the indie RPGs. I would love to contribute to that grand project and idea of telling stories in all sorts of games, forms, and tables.

That would be nice.