Dungeon Chatter

A Party Comes Together: A Modal Approach to Group Dynamics Travis Joseph Rodgers Ars Arcana Blog Volume III, Number 1 Two of the central struggles associated with an RPG party - as opposed to the players or the game itself - are how to bring a diverse group of characters together in the first place and how to keep them sufficiently together in the long run to keep them a party. I draw out two distinct polaristic approaches that are especially difficult to make work for most groups: hard railroad and utter chaos. I draw out a third possibility, based on modal operators (what is possible, what is necessary, what is impossible). Hard Railroad Whatever railroading is in an RPG, there is a bad version of it. Eliminating player agency altogether seems also to eliminate the role of the player. This seems antithetical to the nature of an RPG (it's a ROLE PLAYING game, after all). At the same time, what amounts to railroading will depend upon what an agent wants to do. If an agent w...

In Search of a Railroad (1 of 2 on Railroading) Travis Joseph Rodgers Evidently, one of the worst things that can happen in an RPG is railroading. It sounds terrible, at least, to hear from many who discuss the topic on Twitter’s #rpg or #ttrpg tags. So, consider this brief essay an exercise in conceptual analysis. I’m simply attempting to understand what railroading is, such that it is objectionable. The RPG Theory Review blog has the following to say: Railroading only takes place when player actions are prevented from having any effect on the flow of events . Stack Exchange diagnoses the central wrong of Railroading: It's generally frowned upon, because it disrupts the free-will oriented nature of roleplaying . The Angry GM agrees: Railroading used to refer to the GM forcing the players on a predetermined path through a story . Even TV Tropes.Org chimes in: In short, the GM takes any measure necessary to ensure there is only one direction the campaig...

Ars Arcana Blog: Bringing Your Character to Life with SPARK Travis J. Rodgers The Challenge(s) For the grizzled vet of RPGs, creating a character is often a struggle of too many options rather than not knowing where to start. The character concept comes easily to mind, either because there is a character the vet has been wanting to play or because vets often have served as GM as well as player for so long, character concepts seem to spring from an endless font. The challenge becomes determining which of the system options is the best way to make use of your character concept. Let’s call this the “How? Question” of character design. On the other hand, for the relative novice to Roleplaying, the challenge is two-fold. In addition, to the struggles of navigating a system’s options, the novice may not have, and may struggle to create, the character concept. Let’s call this new question the “What? Question” of character design. The SPARK In an episode of the Dungeon Chat...

Forking Paths in RPGs Ars Arcana 2.3 Travis Joseph Rodgers Roleplaying Games offer the possibility of solitude and solidarity. This might sound paradoxical. On one hand, however, RPGs afford something sometimes pejoratively called escapism. In an RPG, the players get away from things, or at least screen off things for a time being. The etymology of solitude is instructive: in its most extreme form, an RPG offers an escape for one. At the same time, RPGs offer solidarity: a shared, kindred experience. One of the ways this was accomplished in the past was by a sort of transgressive move: the adventure books and games in which individuals separately explored a foreign world then traded the books and experienced the world the other individual had experienced, though with some individual differences. I’ll call these Forking Paths, for the Borges story (strong recommend), and I’ll explain what they are and what value they still possess. Forking Paths In Jorge Luis Borges’s “The...