Technique #1: Create Cheat Sheets
When I’m learning my way through any RPG with some complexity, one of the first things I start working on is a player cheat sheet, an explainer that hopefully they can refer to without disrupting the game. It empowers the player to know their choices, and takes some load off me during play.
But more importantly, building the cheat sheet is the #1 way I actually learn the rules.
I’m working on my King Arthur Pendragon cheat sheet right now, and really it’s all about the Traits and Passions. Glory has its own appendix in the PDF; I just printed copies of that. But Traits and Passions are where the players have the most authority, the most power, in the game.
This process never fails to reveal weirdnesses or disconnects in the rules text. It requires incredibly close reading of the text, perhaps closer than even an editor or developer gives a draft (especially if it’s like the 17th draft of something and you think you’ve already read all this stuff).
In Pendragon, you’ve got these pairs of Traits (Chaste/Lustful, Just/Arbitrary, etc.). They’re kind of paleonarrativist, arguably simmy (I mean if we must refer to this stuff), certainly flaggy descriptors for your character. When you’re correctly aligned with chivalric values (energetic, generous, just, merciful, modest and valorous) then you’re acting most like a good knight. When you’re not in alignment with those values, you’re being kind of a douche. But whatevs; your character, your choice.
But then there are these things called “directed traits.” And because they’re called a Trait, you know, I sort of assumed they act like Paired Traits. But they’re actually modifiers to traits, special cases that cause Traits to spike under certain circumstances (weakness for blondes spikes your Lustful trait, and probably others as well — reckless, trusting, merciful, etc.) So…why not just call them ‘trait modifiers?” Who knows. 30 years of accretion means it is what it is.
Passions are nifty: they let you wildly overindulge some attitude and get a massive spike for the scene (+10 or more on a d20). But you also risk going crazy, falling into despair, or going into shock should you actually fuck up. I love them. I don’t love that you gain them kind of…whenever you want them. But this prompts a GM-Player discussion, which is maybe the point.
Luckily, everything advances pretty much in the same way: You use a thing, you get a check (provides a chance of advancing during the Winter Court — yeah, intermittent rewards, Vegas-style. Either it’ll sink its fangs into you or you’ll fucking hate this part). Traits are more nuanced (you only get a check if it “mattered,” which isn’t so far off from Burning Wheel discretionary powers), and Passions can actually fall if you use them and fail.
Anyway, cheat sheets. Useful process. Developers should really consider the process for games they’re working on. Teaching is learning.
Technique #2: Reading Tea Leaves is up next.
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Technique #2: Reading Tea Leaves
I have this unformed notion in my head of eventually documenting all my various methods of learning RPGs. One of those steps, I think, will have to be how I deal with the fundamental incompleteness of RPG rules. My previous post in this series is here.
In my last Derpening of Mirkwood thread, there was a minor kerfuffle (which I really don’t feel like re-litigating so please don’t) regarding whether you can treat RPG rules like boardgame rules. So let me say a couple things about that:
1) Of course not, duh, they’re different things.
2) I don’t do that, and if you think I do, you’re misreading my approach.
It’s a truism that the basic transaction of roleplaying — folks talking about and agreeing to what is established truth within a collaborative fiction — makes it hard, maybe impossible, to write rules that cover every contingency.
One way this has been addressed — the most terrible way — is when you see traddy physics-type games that create tiny little special case rules for every tiny special-case thing: rules for being poisoned while on fire in zero gravity, rules for feeding your livestock during downtime broken down by seasons, whatever.
Another way it’s been addressed is through consistent approaches that treat all uncertainty as basically the same: Fate’s roll + aspects vs target, Burning Wheel’s versus tests.
And yet another way is by constraining the kinds of uncertainty that can exist in the game: PbtA moves.
I mean, I think it’s great when a game solves the problem in a more consistently applied way! The downside is that it means the players need to use a lot of discretion in deciding just what is being rolled for and why. It also means, for some players, they have to stop being immersed in their characters and think more like an author, or an impartial observer.
I’m not actually advocating for any particular approach, just pointing out that it’s a standing challenge with many solutions. There are entirely legitimate and functional reasons why a game works how it does. There are also lots of unexamined assumptions, even by major writers, designers and developers.
Necessarily Imperfect
So moving on to part two: Once you understand that rules are necessarily imperfect, how do you fill in the gaps?
1) Play lots of different games. Pay attention to the gaps that tend to repeat themselves: that’s where you know the designers are working with an unexploded view of game design. Common gaps: When to roll dice, how to interpret failure, explicit orders of operations. If you see those in your game, you’re dealing with designers with deep assumptions about how RPGs work. So the best you can do is roll with those assumptions.
2) Look for cues in the design as to what the intention of the design is. This one is tough! I’m the first to acknowledge that. And it requires you do lots of #1 up there above. And since everyone’s experiences will be different, that means everyone’s going to bring different interpretations. But for heaven’s sake, arm yourself with knowledge so you can make informed guesses.
I look for:
The kinds of uncertainty the game wants to address (Will you succeed or fail? What does failure cost? How will the fiction change if you express this or that? Can you ensure success? Can you mitigate risk? Can you fail forward or be stopped?)
Economies that encourage particular behavior cycles (do this > earn that > spend on blah)
Assertions the designer has made about a game’s themes or source material. This one is huge! It also means you understand what a “theme” is, and how to critically evaluate source material. Is The Hobbit about sneaking past dragons, or is it about working through hardship with friends? Is Dogs in the Vineyard about smoking demons, or is it about dealing with the fallout from violence? And so on. You don’t even have to agree as to what any given “theme” is! But by golly you’d better acknowledge it exists at all. This gets you in the designer’s groove, hopefully.
2a) Ask the designers. Yay internet. But hey, be ready to deal with the fact that their intentions might not have been well expressed through their own rules. It happens.
3) Use whatever method has worked for you in the past. This is not my personal preferred method, because I think it’s really, really easy to trammel all over the designer’s intent, which very well may require you deal with uncomfortable stuff.
4) Be okay with the deliberate gaps (if your best informed guess is that a gap is deliberate). For example: All the rules dealing with social interactions in The One Ring are written with NPCs in mind — it’s not unusual. Mutant: Year Zero is another notable example. In fact it’s one of the great assumed gaps in trad design!
In the case of The One Ring, I settled on that being a deliberate gap. What I look at is the company rules (the company must agree to a goal every session) and the experience point rules (you only earn if the company is pursuing the agreed-upon goal). The game feels like it’s about cooperation, not personal striving. Compare to say Burning Wheel, which is very much about personal striving (as expressed through its advancement and Artha rules).
But in MYZ I decided it wasn’t at all deliberate (cues: relationship map questions during character creation aim adversity both outward and inward), and had to come up with ways for the system to work fairly with everyone.
The tl;dr of this whole ridiculous post comes down to this:
Be sensitive to what the game is trying to accomplish
Be educated as to the scope of things that RPGs generally have tried to accomplish
Be open to what’s actually on the page and pay attention to what’s not on the page
Always question what you’re bringing to your interpretation.
Just my take. YMMV, the artist is dead, etc etc.
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Same question over here as on Mark’s thread, do you think you do this without regard to how well-supported the game is with cheat sheets?
Yes, absolutely.
No two people have the same perspective on what “well-supported” actually means. My brain, my rules!
Sure, I just meant, like, if someone did it right for you, would you still make one as a study practice?
Nobody “does it right for me.” That is literally an impossible hypothetical.
I get what you’re asking and I can’t answer it.
?
Even downloading other people’s cheat sheets hasn’t proved that useful for me, as it’s just yet another document that I have to learn.
I make cheat sheets, too! They rarely see the light of day, but it’s part of the whole “if you can’t explain it well, you don’t understand it”
Excellent advice and you’re right. You know you understand something when you are able to teach it to someone else. You need to have internalized the stuff to do this effectively.
I did this all through nursing school, too. Endocrine system? Two pages of diagrams, arrows, and cryptic text. Cardiac problems? One page, and an index card entitled “DON’T KILL THE PATIENT.”
It’s personal and has different layers of abstraction — my time as an EMT means I can abbreviate lots of things with “look for shock, but with widening pulse pressures” or “look for shock, esp. tachypnia” or “do 2ndary vitals sweep.”
On a more gaming note — AW character sheets seem to be their own cheat sheets. Other than making sure to include basic moves, I’m not sure how to make a player-facing cheatsheet for AW hacks.
Jesse Cox On a more gaming note — AW character sheets seem to be their own cheat sheets.
One of my favorite things about PbtA-style playbooks!
I also made cheat sheets for PD.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, lately. I think cheat sheets should ideally be followed rather than learned. Like checklists, but more complex. If this happens, do this, then do this. One problem is that not all games are procedural: some of them are full of mechanical options which can be activated in very different situations, outside of any formal procedure. And this, in my opinion, is how a game easily becomes complex and stressful to learn. OTOH, a very procedural game can feel heavy and too rigid.
Now that most of my local players are fully vaccinated, we’re slowly dipping our toes back into in-person play. And it is so weird and fraught.
I can’t stop thinking about all the stuff I learned to make roleplaying happen during the pandemic: video play, character keepers, Miro, screen sharing, dice rollers. I’ve developed a ton of skills in the one type of play I swore I was gonna fight tooth and nail. And here I am, a more-than-competent (I think!) online roleplayer. Now I’m thinking about the stuff that’s better online than in-person, and how I might adapt those techniques to in-person play.
Side Chats and Shared Screens
Parallel communication channels are an affordance I didn’t know I’d enjoy. Chat windows, shared Pinterest board, fun tricks with screen-sharing and voice modulation software — all stuff that’ll be effectively impossible to recreate at a table. Online play requires a lot of different kinds of work, and sometimes GMing online feel more like producing a TV show than facilitating an intimate social experience. I like it so much, though, that I’m thinking about whether a cheap flatscreen in my gaming space and a tablet to sync with it would be good, or distracting. No idea, and too expensive to try as an experiment. I could always try with a tablet, I suppose.
I’ve always hated screens at the table, so it’ll be interesting to see how habitual/fidgety players are gonna be with their phones when we can see each other. I won’t be able to sneak a peek at Twitter any more but that’s for the best.
Character Keepers and other Shared Information
If there’s one killer app in online play for me, it’s character keepers: shared character sheets, typically organized and at least partially automated in Google Sheets. I love being able to see most or all of everyone’s mechanical stuff in one place. Besides character sheets, you can also list all of a game’s moves, or equipment lists, a tab of NPCs with pictures, playbooks…the sky’s the limit and folks are constantly expanding on the concept. I’ve talked about character keepers here before. Tough to replicate at a table without introducing a tablet or laptop to the table, and that’s not a vibe I’m eager to bring.
In a shallow way, character keepers serve a similar function to name tents at a table. For at least some of my online players, keepers have been a bit overwhelming for them and they’d rather just focus on their own stuff. I’ll experiment with larger name tents, I think, where we can all see more stuff I want everyone to be aware of at the table. You can only fit so much on an index card! And everyone’s eyes are getting older. Maybe a GM screen type thing but in reverse, with everyone’s stuff aimed outward at me (and their totally not cheaty rolls hidden from my view).
I used to always do up a short cheat sheet of any new game I was about to run, as a way to learn and solidify the system. Creating a character keeper serves a similar function in my brain, with the added challenge of information design: should I put the “important” stuff higher, and what’s “important” anyway? How do I group related details? What elements can I leave off the keeper? What can I automate and how does the math actually work? Can I pretty it up without making it distracting?
Another tool I’ve enjoyed is using Miro to manage my relationship maps in real time. I don’t use a template, just a blank screen, but the fact the software reroutes connecting lines and allows you to label those lines? Pretty great. If I were more facile with my iPad + Pencil setup, I could do some very neat theatrics with in-person relationship mapping on the tablet. Since theatrics are, in my opinion, more than half the point of the r-map this is probably an area worth practicing.
What I think I’ll miss is building new Pinterest boards for quick screen-sharing purposes. No reason I couldn’t put that on a tablet, and I’ve met several players at conventions who keep big pin boards full of character art. But every time I put more stuff on a screen, that’s more screen time at the table. My intuition says that’s Bad, Actually but that might not be true. Another experiment I suppose.
Convenience and Shorter Sessions
Zoom can be hard on your brain, eyes, and body. My normal in-person tempo has always been 4-hour sessions, which is easy to break up as folks get antsy or uncomfortable, need to pee, refresh drinks, all that. But there’s that focused thing that happens when you’re on screen, and four hours feels interminable. I settled on 3-ish hour sessions, and honestly they felt great. It also was a little easier to meta-prep enough stuff for three hours of focused play.
Shorter sessions, combined with no commute time, is gonna be hard to give up. I really liked being able to just turn everything off, brush my teeth, and go to bed. Very nice. Gonna have to see if my new 3-hour tempo sticks.
The other thing about the convenience of online play is that it was so easy to pull together games from the whole wide world of players. Heck, I even ran an online con for my Slack folks, and got to meet a ton of folks I would not have been able to, probably even if cons were still live.
Unlearning Hypervigilance
Live long enough and hopefully you learn that every positive character trait can also be negative. One of the things I’m “best” at is table management: I’m very sensitive to engagement, energy level, reactions to input. I’m a pleaser. I give until it hurts. And sometimes it does! Lord knows, I have frequently brought games to a close (probably) too soon because I took the temperature of the table and found it tepid.
Turns out that’s been a mistake.
My home group played several games during our lockdown: The Nightmares Underneath (our learning game, wrong choice for our group before we knew how to play online), Imp of the Perverse, Shattered City, and Vaesen. Shattered City lasted a ton of sessions, much longer than I expected — I wrote a big wrapup deep-dive of it, made possible only because we stuck it out for so long. I’m certain that playing Shattered City online, and maintaining the vast trove of documentation that comes with it, is why it lasted as long as it did.
The flipside is that I’m hypervigilant in person. The screen makes it so I can’t quite pick up the cues I normally would. As a result, I mother-hen everyone less than I would in person. Real talk though? Reducing my hypervigilance is a change I need to bring to the table. I need to learn to ignore non-urgent cues that might normally derail the game. Tough balance to reach. Safety awareness needs to stay, panicking when someone rolls their eyes at my cheesy description needs to go.
Another factor I’ve seen is that the players are less engaged, which is good when play gets contentious. I’ve seen many moments in play where something that might have triggered an in-person argument just fizzles out because negative vibes don’t transmit through a camera. The downside of course is that it’s been really hard for my players to engage with each other the way they will at a table. It often feels like most interactions are GM-to-player, because player-to-player is hard to signal. Players actually talking and signaling to each other is going to be nice to return to.
Still A Long Way To Go
As of May 2021, our local, specific pandemic situation is pretty good, not great: 30-some percent full immunizations, 5.5% positivity in our county this week and creeping back to “high.” At one point not too long ago, my county had the highest rate of infection in the world.
Not everyone in my group is immunized yet. Combined with differing personal values and health situations, there’s some weirdness around who gets included and excluded, who attends and whose attendance forces awkward choices. I’m not browbeating anyone, but even that lack of browbeating is weird! It’s weird all the way down.
On the technical side, having to learn my way around online play has made me acutely aware of focusing my techniques for in-person play. Building and testing a character keeper is a lot more work than typing up a cheat sheet, so that taught me to be more mindful about what players actually need in terms of documentation and information sharing. Managing real-time changes to relationship maps is super fun and flashy, but it’s also resulted in losing track of old relationships and situations, something paper is naturally better for. Online shared dice rollers are fun but I also learned you should just trust folks to report their own rolls. Mostly, here a year-and-some into my online play, I’ve learned to pare back as much as possible, and that paring differs by game and by players.
On the emotional side, I’ve learned I miss in-person conventions much more than I thought I would. Those are still a long ways off. Maybe 2022? Hopefully? I read recently that we’re probably not going to get to herd immunity in the US, and we’ll just end up with a manageable cold/flu/COVID season and boosters. It doesn’t have to be that way though. I hope more folks will take their responsibilities as seriously as their rights.
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