On Mastodon, I follow the rpg designer S. John Ross, who has been working in rpg publishing for decades. He is the man behind the rules-light Risus rpg system, the big list of rpg scenario plots, a…
Old man yells at cloud. Just because the groups/campaigns he may have played in the last 20 years apparently felt limiting and anti-improv, doesn’t mean that that’s some kind of trend and things were better back in the good ol days/
I kind of agree. I feel like it’s an evolution of the medium stemming from more new DM advice being a big focus and set pieces, which I think are awesome and can lead to fun memorable stories. These high trust adventure design he mentions I do like as well, but I have to admit that they can be intimidating. It’s generally how I’ve seen Chronicles of Darkness adventures written, and they’re kind of intimidating, especially when I was a new GM, because they rely on more improvisation and storytelling ability than a new GM might have accumulated.
Modern adventures, which describe more paths and possible consequences, branches, and options explicitly, I think give more support to newbies. While it’s true we didn’t have that scaffolding decades ago, I don’t think making games more approachable is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it’s great, our hobby has never been more popular.
On the other hand, I’m probably going to write my next adventure in a more HTT style now that I have all these ideas rolling around in my head lol. I actually liked this article and the way the terminology made me think deeper about some things.
Old man yells at cloud. Just because the groups/campaigns he may have played in the last 20 years apparently felt limiting and anti-improv, doesn’t mean that that’s some kind of trend and things were better back in the good ol days/
I kind of agree. I feel like it’s an evolution of the medium stemming from more new DM advice being a big focus and set pieces, which I think are awesome and can lead to fun memorable stories. These high trust adventure design he mentions I do like as well, but I have to admit that they can be intimidating. It’s generally how I’ve seen Chronicles of Darkness adventures written, and they’re kind of intimidating, especially when I was a new GM, because they rely on more improvisation and storytelling ability than a new GM might have accumulated.
Modern adventures, which describe more paths and possible consequences, branches, and options explicitly, I think give more support to newbies. While it’s true we didn’t have that scaffolding decades ago, I don’t think making games more approachable is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it’s great, our hobby has never been more popular.
On the other hand, I’m probably going to write my next adventure in a more HTT style now that I have all these ideas rolling around in my head lol. I actually liked this article and the way the terminology made me think deeper about some things.