Jay Dragon (& Friends)
patreon
Where Does The Game Live
🕑 Added 2024-10-07 16:01:54 +0000 UTCI like to joke about two sets of hypothetical scenarios. I want you to read both sets, and compare: in which situations would you personally describe the player as “playing the game” and which would you perhaps wonder if she’d be better off playing a different RPG or making her own?
Here’s the first set:
A Dungeons & Dragons GM runs up to you and excitedly tells you about her new campaign. It uses all the mechanics of D&D but it’s set in a science-fiction world with laser-swords and jedi-wizards casting spells. For each class in the Player’s Handbook she’s invented an equivalent in her new setting.
A Dungeons & Dragons GM runs up to you and excitedly tells you about her new campaign. It’s set in a fantasy world, but she’s replaced the D20 mechanic with a Blades in the Dark dice pool, and she’s replaced the classes with a feat system from Savage Worlds, and she’s replaced initiative with Troika’s bowl of scraps based initiative.
Here’s the second set:
A Yazeba’s B&B Concierge runs up to you and excitedly tells you about her group. They wanted to play Yazeba’s in a high fantasy setting, so instead of “Yazeba” there’s “Mordred the Grumpy Witch” and instead of “Sal” there’s “Dominic the Bard.” The Bed & Breakfast is instead a castle, but all the chapters are otherwise the same.
A Yazeba’s B&B Concierge runs up to you and excitedly tells you about her group. They’ve been playing a new chapter of her own invention, where the residents go on a multi-session long bank heist. It uses the mechanics from Blades in the Dark, and besides its use of Bingos & Whoopsies has no real comparison to any other chapter in the game.
Well these are a lot weirder, aren’t they! In both sets of scenarios, the 1st scenario describes someone retooling the setting of a game-text while keeping the rules of the text entirely the same. The 2nd scenario describes someone retooling the mechanics of the game-text while preserving the setting. What’s interesting for me is that I’m much more open to the 1st scenario than the 2nd when it comes to Dungeons & Dragons (and in fact, when I used to run the game I was very much a 1st scenario kind of GM) but when it comes to Yazeba’s Bed & Breakfast, I would consider the 1st scenario very strange and the 2nd scenario entirely reasonable.
What can this tell us about where games live? Is there something more essential about the setting provided in the game-text of Yazeba’s, or does Yazeba’s provoke an entirely different relationship with the game text than D&D, or something else? And how does this extend to other games?
Comments
Stepnix
hmmm for the second Yazeba's example, there's still some continuity with the rest of the campaign. Yazeba's already encourages an attitude of adding or discarding rules as needed, with the characters and setting providing continuity throughout the whole process. There's a lot of table work to make that new ruleset work, but it's pretty much just constrained to that one chapter The first Yazeba's example requires a lot more table work, because you need to "rewrite" (mentally if not physically) every single allusion to the default characters and reconfigure the implications of the text for your new cast and setting. I don't think it'll settle into an easy find+replace pattern like sword->lightsaber could
Dinah from Kabalor
Having not played Yazeba's but read lots about it (obvs in this Patreon), the second set feel equally Yazeba's-y to me. I think if you replace "set in a fantasy world" in set 1 option 2 with "set in Eberron, but" or "basically the Strahd campaign, but" that might make it more equivalent? Even with that change though I think in the first set option 2 maybe doesn't need to describe themself as a "D&D GM" and (with my limited knowledge) the second set option 2 still can say they're a Yazeba's B&B Concierge. Even not having played it I can't imagine Yazeba's without the characters or at least their archtypes.
Sface
This reminds me a lot of the presentation I gave on Zeeb's for Generation Analog conference. In some ways, it's a very aesthetically driven game, which is what I think of when you point out that scenario 2 feels more authentic to Zeebs. My question is, when we drill down into why #1 doesn't feel good, is it the shift in setting or the rebranding of the characters. Is it the characters that drive it even beyond the setting? Or can they even be separated.
Travis LaFave
I guess it would really depend on the game. I'm not familiar with Yazeba's, but it sounds like for that game the setting or aesthetic is primary. Like, if you massively change those why are still saying you're playing Yazeba's? Meanwhile D&D has MANY very different and wholly separate settings. You might have particular focus on a setting, such as Planescape, but D&D as a product is first and foremost a set of rules.
Devan Wardrop-Saxton
This is such an interesting question -- in my view the scenarios you described as feeling better hit me as being where folks are engaging what is already the most free/flexible in the out-of-the-box version of each game and running with it. It's really interesting to think about looking for what the designers are already telling you is set up to change most freely in a game -- and what isn't! :)
Matt Penniman
As a very partial reaction... one of these games is defined by a 50-year history of narrative variety (all those TSR boxed-set campaign settings) and mechanical consistency (roll a d20, it's better to roll high than low.) The other game is defined by a much shorter history of narrative consistency (it's *Yazeba's* Bed and Breakfast, not a generic Beds and Breakfasts framework) and mechanical variety (no two chapters are quite the same! stickers! journeys! unlockable characters!)
Fable
In my class we discuss some axes for catagorizing games (rules light - heavy, etc) and one is flexible vs focused, which is if a game is a toolset divorced from a planned setting (GURPs, FATE) to one where the mechanics are inspired by/directly reinforce the setting (Spire, Wildsea). I put D&D just a couple notches past flexible so it really isnt much to reskin it if youre keeping the mechanics, while I would read Yazeebas as focused, wherein the setting is fundamental so if you have new mechanics that support it then thats just expanding on the rulebook. Is that anything?
