@mrundkvist "Simulation" is code for "lazy". Game design is all about making abstractions both satisfying and fun. Calling it simulation is just refusing to do the work.

Often when I read complicated RPG rules I think to myself, "There is no way that this is actually playable at the gaming table. This is aspirational rules design. People will just forget to use most of this, because there's nothing that triggers an RPG rule beyond what people remember."

#ttrpg

@mrundkvist

Apropos of nothing, RPGNet currently has a thread on "Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth".

How we figured out how to play Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth | Tabletop Roleplaying Open

Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth promises a game where you can create a world, zoom in and out of aspects of it and speed up and slow down time as you play...

RPGnet Forums (forum.rpg.net)

@juergen_hubert

"Verbose, obtuse, badly explained, badly organised, repetitive, over-complex, pretentious, but containing one phenomenally good idea. Aria should have been a milestone in the history of roleplaying games. Unfortunately, it has turned out to be a large and expensive doorstop instead. Aria is quite literally unplayable."

Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth - Wikipedia

(en.wikipedia.org)

@juergen_hubert

"Verbose, obtuse, badly explained, badly organised, repetitive, over-complex, pretentious, but containing one phenomenally good idea. Aria should have been a milestone in the history of roleplaying games. Unfortunately, it has turned out to be a large and expensive doorstop instead. Aria is quite literally unplayable."

Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth - Wikipedia

(en.wikipedia.org)

@mrundkvist

I still have it on my bookshelf, because I am a sucker for worldbuilding tools. But I have neither run nor played it.

@juergen_hubert @mrundkvist

I have read it once. It was excellent for generating interesting dreams.

@mrundkvist

I still have it on my bookshelf, because I am a sucker for worldbuilding tools. But I have neither run nor played it.

@juergen_hubert
IMHO, worldbuilding tools belong on computers. But I am very interested in scenario generating tools. This is of course in line with my general unwillingness to invest in a game world beyond the needs of a given scenario.

@mrundkvist

I dunno, I think there is something magic about a good set of random tables. For me, they really get those creative juices flowing.

I buy pretty much anything from Sine Nomine Publishing, for instance, even though I am not keen on OSR rule systems as such.

@juergen_hubert
Yeah, I like random tables, I just don't want them to generate a world for me.

I have had fun gamemastering the randomly populated wilderness hex crawl "Dark of Hot Springs Island" (2017). And I've signed up to run four sessions with it at cons this spring semester. Maybe this this is what you mean by a world generator?

#ttrpg

@mrundkvist

First, a disclaimer: I love worldbuilding as an expression of the #ttrpg hobby, and putting a lot of effort into this makes it easier for me to improvise setting details when the PCs go off-script.

For me, random tables are a useful starting point which allow me to break out of my own habits and assumptions, similar to how I assign NPC gender randomly these days.

As an example, let's say I want to add a village to the map. I use the random tables from p. 159 in "Worlds Without End" to get a basic idea of what the village is all about. I get:

Rationale for the Village’s Existence: (8) "A bandit camp that went legitimate"
Who runs it? (8) "A pragmatic warlord"
Significant Locals: (10) "Native hedge mage"
A Current Pressing Problem: (1) "Vital food stores have been lost or stolen"
Local Likely to Interact with Adventurers: (3) "Gentry who wants no local gossip about their need"
Interesting Things the Place Can Offer Heroes: (1) "An unusually large amount of saved coinage"

And within a mere minute or two, I already have a vision of the place and some local flavor which I can use to improvise things when the PCs are poking around the place. And I can build upon these concepts and make the village more fleshed out if the PCs stay there for an extended time. I find this _tremendously_ useful.

@juergen_hubert
I get it!

Rationale for the Village’s Existence: in Scandinavia, Germany and Poland, this is usually up to 3000 years in the past and forgotten.

@mrundkvist

First, a disclaimer: I love worldbuilding as an expression of the #ttrpg hobby, and putting a lot of effort into this makes it easier for me to improvise setting details when the PCs go off-script.

For me, random tables are a useful starting point which allow me to break out of my own habits and assumptions, similar to how I assign NPC gender randomly these days.

As an example, let's say I want to add a village to the map. I use the random tables from p. 159 in "Worlds Without End" to get a basic idea of what the village is all about. I get:

Rationale for the Village’s Existence: (8) "A bandit camp that went legitimate"
Who runs it? (8) "A pragmatic warlord"
Significant Locals: (10) "Native hedge mage"
A Current Pressing Problem: (1) "Vital food stores have been lost or stolen"
Local Likely to Interact with Adventurers: (3) "Gentry who wants no local gossip about their need"
Interesting Things the Place Can Offer Heroes: (1) "An unusually large amount of saved coinage"

And within a mere minute or two, I already have a vision of the place and some local flavor which I can use to improvise things when the PCs are poking around the place. And I can build upon these concepts and make the village more fleshed out if the PCs stay there for an extended time. I find this _tremendously_ useful.

@crabsoft
Unworkable rules are often the result of simulationist over-ambition. But the combat system in Swords of the Serpentine manages to be both unworkable AND non-simulationist.

It's a 2008 rules-lite system that by 2022 had mutated into a hideous bush of exceptions and odd links to the game's skill system, all because the designer wanted to insert hard-coded narrative opportunities into combat. Also unintended exploits...

#ttrpg

@mrundkvist @crabsoft I am increasingly weary of these games that think the part that needs mechanistic work is the storytelling part.

@zdl @mrundkvist I always chalk it up to me not having a ton of experience with a wide variety of systems. I assume that there is probably a good reason to add mechanics for roleplaying but, in the back of my mind, it always feels so strange.

@juergen_hubert @mrundkvist

I wouldn't have been able to come up with that much flavour if you gave me a week to create a map settlement.

@mrundkvist

Though places reinvent themselves often enough. Take #Oldenburg , where I live - it used to be a remote provincial town for centuries when it belonged to the Danish crown, but in the 19th century it became the seat of a Ducal court, which had a massive impact on the character of the city.

@juergen_hubert
I've been thinking about that "Rationale for the Village’s Existence" thing. It seems very American to me, like something out of a Western movie. Or perhaps something from the German Ostsiedlung period of 1150-1350. It assumes that adventures are set in a wilderness with only a few recent settlements. And they're named "Grayson's Freehold" etc.

Similar to how Americans think that a house from 1930 is super old and possibly haunted!

#ttrpg