Monthly Musings: Back to Reality
A month ago I was on the train down to Expo as I hit send on the newsletter for what turned out to be an excellent weekend of gaming. Excellent, exhausting and expensive. You can read all about it on the blog but suffice to say I had a blast. I’ve spent much of the past month thinking about next year and how I can have an even better time, probably by volunteering to run more games.
Sadly, part of the reason I’ve been reflecting on expo is because my gaming this month turned into a bit of a dumpster fire with every single session cancelled at relatively short notice. It’s been a harsh reminder of two things. First, just how little gaming I actually get to do these days. Second, that gaming is important to me. It’s a core part of who I am and I try to take my commitments to gaming seriously. This isn’t a complaint about people wanting gaming to be a casual hobby, I appreciate that people want different things, but it is exceedingly frustrating to block out an evening only to have the session cancelled an hour or two before. Doubly so when I’m the GM and have spent time beforehand prepping.
Starter sets: Who are they for?
Part of my frustration is because I’ve invested time in learning a new system - The One Ring by Free League, first as a player and then GM of the starter set. I’ve come away from that asking myself a question about starter sets in general - who are they for? It’s a simple enough question but looking at The One Ring and other starter sets I own (Blade Runner, Legend of the Five Rings 5th Edition, Call of Cthulhu) I’ve come to a rather muddled answer.
Why? Because there's no consistency or signposting of the target audience.
Starter sets seem to fall into two categories - those aimed at new gamers, that introduce the basics of RPGs and the genre, and those aimed at experienced gamers, trying to sell them on a new system/setting. Call of Cthulhu, with its mix of solo intro scenario and ‘standard’ scenarios (for a GM and players) is clearly the former (as is the Legened of the Five Rings set, despite my issues with it). Blade Runner on the other hand, with its extensive handouts and complicated Case File, is designed to hook experienced players into a new system.
The problem with The One Ring is that it fails at being either. It’s aimed at new players but needs an experienced GM. There’s a lack of ‘new group’ guidance (especially how to make failed rolls meaningful), missing details, and overall poor organisation of information. At one point there’s even a suggestion that the PCs could use equipment they aren’t given until the next adventure.
And that’s a problem, because it makes life difficult for new groups and GMs to get into the game.
Why does this bother me?
Because it makes it even harder to get people to try something other than D&D. The Lord of the Rings brand should be a big draw but if the starter set aimed at new(er) groups isn’t easy to run it will put people off and this issue extends to all starter sets, especially if they aren’t clear in who they are aimed at.
While I’ll probably never release a starter set it has made me think about how I present my games. I have plans to write a simple sci-fi game to use as my ‘house system’ to showcase the Dyson Eclipse. I want that game to be accessible to new groups. Reading these starter sets has been invaluable in highlighting how easy it is to carry implicit design biases with us, fingers crossed its a lesson I can learn from going forwards.
Design Diary
The majority of my time this month has gone to rewrites on Hopes and Dreams of the Orbital Bound, a project that is progressing slower than I’d like as I struggle to find words that I’m happy with. Backers to the project have already received access to the first draft of the game but I’m keen to reach the point where I can start sharing details publicly. Hopefully next month.
My just for fun project at present is adapting and expanding the Duskbringers for submission to the Classic Explorer Workshop jam. I haven’t looked at this adventure in over a year but it’s honestly so encouraging to come back to it and go, “hey, I really like this.” Who knows, it may even end up as a small print product by the time Dragonmeet rolls around.
Links, links, links…
I’m on TikTok, where I’ll be highlighting games that I’ve been reading and playing, with the occasional bit of self promotion and design discussion.
I don’t really watch many streams but this video by Ginny Di grabbed my attention. In it she breaks down the source of her earnings as a full time streamer and what a typical week looks like. I always appreciate hearing about the reality of working full time in the industry, even if its a part of it I’m not overly connected to.
Meanwhile Chris Bissette of Loot the Room looks at the High Cost of Art and cuts straight to the point - it’s prohibitively expensive to include the amount of art people would like in even small press zines.
Signal to Noise is back in stock at Indie Press Revolution, marking the third restock of the game (also available via IPR is Project Cassandra, my Cold War game of psychic spies). What started as a way for me to process the isolation of lockdown has become my best selling release so far so thank you to everyone that has bought it!
The Gizmodo execs prove the stupidity of using AI to write articles by publishing a clickbait ‘chronological list of Star Wars TV movies and TV shows’ filled with errors and omissions.
The Wrap Up
That’s it for this month, I’m off to enjoy a bit of sun while I try to avoid stressing about the collapse of the internet as we know it (and twitter in particular) for the Nth time this year. For now you can still find me on twitter and mastodon (I’ve signed up for Threads but just to reserve my username), while I wait and see how it all pans out.
Stay safe,
Craig