What I like most about Apocalypse World is Advanced Fuckery – the way it gives you the tools to make your own moves – to make your own rules.
There’s a video out there that’s making the rounds. It’s about a lot of things, and it’s very, very good [EDIT: Apparently the video quotes DMs without consent, nor opportunity to reply. This might seem like a small thing, since it is a DM that paints Brandon Leon-Gambetta in a better light, but it really rubs me the wrong way – according to him the interaction did not even seem like it was going to be used in a video] and it’s also about Root: The RPG, and also I have a bunch of issues with it, and also that’s kind of a paradox, because I also feel it echoes a lot of my thinking about RPGs. So I figured, since several things have happened since I wrote my Root: The RPG three-parter, it might be time to revisit it. Things that have happened:
- I have played absolutely no Root: The RPG, and don’t particularly miss it
- I have written a couple of rules drafts cannibalizing systems from said RPG
- I have become a person-who-is-trying-to-sell-you-a-thing
- My lungs no longer hurt when I breathe (not really related, I’m just happy about it)
- Magpie Games have released Avatar Legends, which earned nearly 10 million dollars on Kickstarter, making a bunch of people wonder whether they still qualify as “indie”.
I’ll also give some thoughts on the video by Collabs Without Permission. Stay tuned
My “old” review – or, do I still believe this?
The first part of my Root review is a gush-piece. I leave my major criticisms to part two and three.
This has changed a bit. I still think the playbooks are fine – but just that. I think the game is both overwritten and underdesigned. Also, the adherence to the board game bits and bobs are kind of a hamstring. In fact, a lot of the core book is, ironically, a bit much. And some of it isn’t much at all.
One particular thing is how unremarkable the core book is without factoring in Travellers & Outsiders, what has often (and rightly) been called the game’s “Day 1 DLC”. In fact, I wrote about this in part 1: The expansion book has many, many things that should have been in the core book. And since this really isn’t a beginner RPG in any way, might as well gut a lot of the text.
After having played it, and thought about it, I hate the reputation rules. Not really the idea behind them, but the way it’s implemented. The presentation is extremely convoluted, and could have been made a lot simpler by giving the vagabond band shared reputation tracks. And of course, all the fun things you can do with it, is in Travellers & Outsiders.
So, is the core book really good? Probably not. In part 2 I delve into some of the things the game as a whole lacks – particularly the Ruins which are mentioned all of the time. I state that Root isn’t a game for beginners, which I stick by, despite what the kickstarter claimed.
So far, I largely stand by what I’ve written. Things get a bit more juicy in part 3.
I realize now I’ve forgotten a lot of the smarter points I’ve made about the game. For instance, the way the game benefits from using things outside the game. The game wants to be beginner-friendly, but fails. But where it also fails is…
I did not have a blast running the campaign. It wasn’t exactly bad, it just never really lived up to the image I had in my mind of what playing would look like, but more importantly, I played with a “writer’s-room” group, and it is absolutely not built for that kind of group. I play with another group which does a lot more group-based faction play, and I figured that it would have worked a lot better in that group. But this is kind of the thing: When I read the game, and the things I absolutely love about it, what I’m really looking at is the faction system from Travellers & Outsiders. My positive reception to that segment, makes me overlook the core issue: The rest of the game kind of flounders.
Most importantly, I’m reading and reviewing the game as if it was a zine, or a scenario, or a little shitty book made by some guy in Ohio. I’m not really considering that this is a product produced by a studio of people with resources, technical skills and most importantly, 600.000 dollars to finish the product. Now, the reasoning for this is obvious – my brain is kind of busted when it comes to money. This permeates my thinking, and more importantly, my life. I cannot comprehend having 600.000 dollars for a project. Now, disclaimer, I realize this is not profit: With Kickstarter fulfillment and all it encompasses, I honestly have no idea what the people involved actually make – I suspect it is much lower than what people think when they hear 600.000 dollars.
What I can say, however, is that it from a design perspective, it would have been prudent to cut down on the stretch-goals, and pay the designers more, for a longer period of time, to make a game that was well-tested, thoroughly edited, and took more brave decisions. Something insteresting which I often think about, is the way that the T&O systems for running the war, is actually built to break. There is no chance that a status quo will remain – in fact, one faction will likely come out on top very quickly. I thought this was ingenious, because it puts the Vagabonds in a position where it might be neccessary to assist the underdog – but really, it is equally likely that it was an accident.
Of course, in the world of massive kickstarters, design must remain subservient to marketing. And this is where Collabs Without Permission’s video comes in.
Something about Rules
I think Vi’s video is great, even though there are some things I disagree with, sometimes vehemently so. I don’t really know their roleplaying background, so I’m sorry if I make some assumptions – I will try not to. I will, however, sketch out my own
- My first game was with a roleplaying club who for some reason preferred Earthdawn over D&D.
- My first truly good memories of roleplaying was in “system-less” Fastaval scenarios.
- I remember posting at the forge, but I was psychotic (literally) at the time, so my memories of it are hazy.
- Apocalypse World is still my favourite game.
So, many of the things which Vi criticizes about Root, I find that I take major umbrage to mainly because they’re a criticism of Apocalypse World, and ones that I find are integral to the way I play games. Caveat: Vi might not actually think this of Apocalypse World or PbtA as a whole, but rather the way it’s implemented in Root, I don’t know. Hopefully this will make sense anyway.
There are things I agree with: The way much of the book is a commercial, but also the layout and presentation of Gelilah’s grove. But the lack of setting, the prevalence of moves, and the “can of worms” that is Chapter 8: Running the Woodland”, are really criticizing mainstays of PbtA design, and I think they vastly misunderstand them.
For instance, they hit a pet-peeve of mine when they say “Here are the buttons: Push them” of the moves. I’ve seen this argument several times: PbtA moves are genre shorthands, that allow you to do what the genre does. In the video, they are called “program-like”, and it is compared with “most TTRPGs”, where a stat is compared to the action, and you pick which is best to resolve it – Moves mean you want to do one particular thing, and rewards you for doing one particular thing, unlike these games where you can do anything.
This is expounded in the “Can of worms” segment, which looks at the GM section. The claim here is that it puts everything that happens in a game of Root, and credits it to the designers. Everything you do is you following a rule written in the game. Whether the book itself claims this or not, is not really what I want to dig into. But this is really one of the sacred cows of inde RPGS: The lumpley principle. In some sense, it has become so ubiquitous we might as well forget all about it. There are several versions of it, but I like the simple one:
“However your group decides what happens in play, that’s your system… When someone declares that something happens in the game, it becomes true when everyone assents to it, and under no other conditions” – Vincent Baker (http://lumpley.com/index.php/anyway/thread/694)
So, we always follow rules when playing a game – however, when there are no written procedures to facilitate it (and often when there are) we default to the social contract of our group. Nothing bad here, many groups work decently enough this way. I’m not a proponent of the idea that players are stupid, and need to be funelled towards “good storytelling”, whatever that is. But I think there’s a dichotomy of thinking somewhere here which stifles thinking about games: “Systems are supposed to make players good” vs. “systems are supposed to avoid stepping on players doing good”.
The more I write this, the more I realize I’m writing a manifesto: I hate “good vs. bad” in talking about roleplaying. They definitely exist, but I find them incredibly boring. I think it makes a lot more sense to see games, systems, rules, all of these things that exist in text, as devices that change communication in ways that go against immediate desire.
TTRPG rules (and I have no qualms about calling agenda, principle, and GM moves rules) are limiters. One of the most basic rulesets could be “Tell a story together, and whenever you disagree on what should happen, find some way to figure it out”, and it would be just fine. I don’t believe you need anything else. What game systems DO do, is change the regular communication pattern to something that might be more interesting than what group consensus delivers.
It is an inherently anarchic artform. It’s folk art, as Vi states. Even though it is a field dominated by a virtual monopoly, it instinctively goes against centralization. When I design a game, I am not searching for a good narrative, or trying to mind control players, I am eternally searching for the interesting thing that might arise from following the rules I lay down. And I am going to explain this by tooting my own horn.
Zâr – an anarchist delve into the psyche
It surprised me how well Zâr performed at Fastaval 2022. I gave only the barest framework for a game, and a pretty vibes-based setting description, and refused to elaborate this when people asked. I wanted to see what might arise, if I didn’t interfere too much. These are my thoughts, my actual, genuine thoughts on what exactly goes on in a game of Zâr.
There is a game at the centre of Zâr. A system by which we determine whether Angra is succesfully excorcized from a dream. The players have a simple goal: Exorcize as many dreams as possible. It is a suitsian game: You have a goal, you can do things to further it, etc. etc.
But Zâr is not really about winning or losing this game. It’s about whether you want to win it.
There is no chance in the game at the centre of Zâr. If a group decides that they want to win the game, they can just do so: You can literally draw as many cards as you want, until you are absolutely certain that the draws from it succeed. You can always, always save the Shah. The price is your own self.
In a sense, there are three layers to the game:
1. Do you succeed in saving the realm/Shah (which is a smokescreen, since it cannot fail if you so decide)
2. Are you willing to sacrifice your own self to do so?
3. Is the realm/Shah actually worth saving?
Obviously, it is question two and three that are interesting, and if it was actually spelled out, I think it would be a lot less so. The game at the centre works because it places a “might” into the regular communication/decisionmaking of the players. I personally have a lot of trouble identifying Angra as a particularly evil entity – destructive perhaps, but only of what is revealed during the dreams – tales of injustice, of cruelty, and oppression. And I very deliberately made the ending where Angra “wins” ambiguous – it simply lets Angra loose, but doesn’t detail what the consequences are. On the other hand, if Angra is contained, we know that the results are dreadful.
Some groups played it straight, and found tension in the mechanics on layer two, where others delved deeply into the existential dread which arose in the characters. I loved it all.
I am rambling, I’m sorry.
What I’m trying to say is that roleplaying in all its forms exist as a conversation mediated by rules – and often occurring in what is omitted. I think the criticism of moves, and agendas, and principles, and all that, comes from a much, much too rigid idea of what a rule can possibly do.
I hate the term “rulings over rules”. I used the phrase in the original draft of Heirs of the Leviathan, but ended up replacing it with… “rules”. The concept of a “ruling”, means that you rule based on something, usually a rulebook, or a set of principles. You adapt a rule to fit whatever is going on, but you still put the rulebook on a pedestal of authority. I think that, when a group decides to adjudicate something in a particular way, it makes a lot more sense to simply call that “a rule”.
What I like most about Apocalypse World is Advanced Fuckery – the way it gives you the tools to make your own moves – to make your own rules.
I sometimes feel that I read rulebooks in an alien way. I think the Agenda/Principles/Move division is good because it gives me things to say that I don’t necessarily think of in the moment. I don’t think of it as rules that constraiun me, since I could just not do it. The success of a PbtA game hinges on the quality of its rules – how likely am I to follow them. A product where I ignore most of the rules, is bad. I like how rigid moves can be, because it gives people things to play around. For instance, in Heirs, there is a rule about how you cannot deal Hurt to another Heir – whenever you come into such a conflict, it ends in death.
In the first playtest of Heirs, I noticed something awesome. Because everyone around the table knew how it worked, it built up a heap of tension whenever two Heirs interacted. They argued and bickered… and tried to find common ground. The existence of the rule meant it shaped the interaction in interesting ways, even though the rule technically wasn’t used.
I don’t know how to end this. It is a 3 hour long video, and what Vi says goes contrary to my basic conception of games, but we still end up at the same destination: Roleplaying games are folk art. My job, as a designer, is simply to give tools which might give players a deeper experience than they could on their own. I will, however, state that I think rulesets can impact Make-believe much more significantly than adventures.
But then again, I am trying to sell you something.
Bandithmer 
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