Free Kriegsspieling the GLoG: A tale of Language, Barbarians and Popcorn

If you just want to see the current version of Free Laws of Kriegsspiel (FLoK) CLICK HERE. 

The rest of this post is more or less an attempt to map the influences that must have somehow caused this idea that came to me. This isn't a historical retelling, none of this was in my mind when the very first version of this popped into my head the other day. However, I do not believe myself (or anyone for that matter) to be wholly original, so these ideas probably influenced me in some way or other. After all:

RPGs as Concepts rather than Definitions

This is another more philosophical post. In fact, outside of the fact that I think the philosophy in this post could be used to help you in your game design, there isn't much here in terms of gameable content. However, I am a pragmatist and I genuinely believe that these insights are of actual use when designing games. 

This post in is part a response to a wonderful video done by Kyle from Map Crow, on the question 'Are RPGs Art?' in which he gives a definition of roleplaying games and one of art and goes on to show how the former meets the qualifiers of the latter, proofing that Kyle can, and I quote 'win any argument as long as [he] can set the definitions.'

Fae in the Valley and how they rub off on people

Small spirits, especially local ones, are incredibly fascinating. From Ghibli movies like Spirited Away and the mushi in Mushi-shi to the mischievous and otherwordly fairies from folktales, the idea of these creatures that are in some way fundamentally different from people while still affecting our lives is something I have been obsessing over recently. 

One of the things I like is the weird and absolute rules that these creatures seem to follow. Whether that is being invisible as long as you hold your breath, having to eat their food to remain real within their world, being forbidden from mating with mortals or being able to fly if you truly believe you can. These laws seem as absolute as those governing physics and chemistry, which makes them incredibly alien and super reliable, both of which I am a complete sucker for. 

So how would this work in project social?

Primordial Class/Background: the Executioner

Continuing my work on project Social, here is another background/class thingy. I find these really help me to build the Valley from a player's perspective, while also being a really fun exercise.

Recently I read a pretty interesting article about executioners, which made me double down on putting an executioner family in the Town. Meet the Verderfs:

The Onderberg's: Primordial Miner class

Despite my silence on here, project Social is still very much on my mind. Especially the way I intend to do backgrounds, or classes, is something I have been mulling over quite a bit. 

Chris McDowall's latest project 'Primordial System', in which he attempts to make a game with primarily qualitative design in mind, has been really inspiring for me as a way to use backgrounds to worldbuild, while also making them weird and interesting. 

Because the point of project Social is to have a less individualistic focus, I do still want backgrounds to embed you in a subculture of the Valley, but I want to do so in a way that makes these subcultures interesting and intruiging, almost like secret societies. 

The basic layout for my 'backgrounds' at the moment is this:

No one expects 7 years late Dragon Age: Inquisition takes

Back in the day I absolutely loved Dragon Age: Origins. The many different starting points, often having more than 2 completely binary options for the major plot points and lots of dialogue options made Origins sort of a precursor for me when it comes to roleplaying. I played as lots of characters that felt meaningfuly different from one another in that game, despite the confines of the videogame medium. 

Dragon Age: Inquisition is not at all the same, and in many ways inferior to Origins (though in my opinion still better than Dragon Age 2). However, from the context of my current project, Inquisition is more interesting to me, as it focusses on building up a community. Though the excecution often isn't great, there are some ideas in there that I think are worth considering for my current project:

Project 'Social': making a community focussed RPG

For a while now I have been trying to focus on community over individuality (look e.g. at my magic system and my polytheism system). This is in part inspired by my own beliefs, but in part I just feel that a community focus is underrepresented in RPG content. It feels like every adventure game is about individuals, and to me that becomes kind of boring. 

A common fix in adventure games that want to focus more on communities seems to be handing out XP for doing stuff for common folk, or a specific community. But this feels like a bit of a quick fix, that doesn't tap into the problem I have with a lot of towns and communities in RPGs: they don't feel like communities. 

d12 faerie creatures based on fake etymologies

I really want faerie creatures living somewhat along side regular people, similar to how you see in the kids show Hilda for a bigger project I am working on (which is supposed to stay small, but I can't seem to help myself). Initially, it seemed to me that there were two ways to go about this, both of which I thought were dissatisfying

Pillaging the Hobbit for RPG ideas

After watching the Hobbit movies (which I knew were going to be bad, but still managed to disapoint me) I went back to reading the book. As a kid I loved reading it, especially the chapter 'riddles in the dark', but I never considered it from an RPG perspective before. During my last readthrough I noticed a lot of things I liked and that I think could work in RPGs as well, so here are some ideas pillaged from the Hobbit I will keep in mind in the future:

Adventure RPGs and Time

Obligatory philosophy tie-in:

Henri Bergson, the oft forgotten mega star of philosophy of the early 1900's, has a  very interesting conception of time. According to him, we have been falsely trained to understand time in spatial terms, i.e. as something you can measure and that is only ever different in degree (you can have more or less of it). Instead of thinking of time in terms of something that differs in degree, Bergson asks us to consider time as something that differs in kind: That time I was angry is followed by the time I regret getting angry, which is not different in degree (how long it takes) but different in how you experience that moment (the heated flush of anger compared with the ruminating grind of regret).

Very simply put: time feels different in different moments. The easiest way to see that there is merit to this idea is to compare time when you are bored, from time when you are distracted: the former crawls while the latter seems to fly.