call of cthulhu

Alternatives to Dungeons and Dragons for the Hasbro-Alienated

/ geotrickster / Leave a comment

Annoyed by changes in Dungeons and Dragons corporate policy and the Open Gaming License? Need ideas for alternative systems? This is a post for you.

Inspired by Neckbeardia’s James going on an impassioned and dare I say moving plea (go to the 36 minute mark here) for the relevancy of the tabletop roleplaying hobby in an increasingly socially alienating and extremist era, plus the seemingly contradictory need to gatekeep hobbies to prevent them from going the same way as DnD currently is, I am going to continue my now three year annual trend of writing about roleplaying games in January. Specifically, I wish to lay out the opportunities for alternative (non-DnD) systems to soak up defecting players from the increasingly corporatized and monocultural direction of the largest and oldest of the hobbies. I have never liked DnD as much as some other games-especially since the rise of Wizards of the Coast and the modern 3, 4, and 5 editions- and the near monopoly that the game holds on the hobby is not a good thing. Especially when it seems media organizations are parroting the narrative of these companies that anyone who defects might be some kind of reactionary or racist for preferring a different mechanical system. This is an attempt to weaponize trendy (amongst the professional managerial class) politics in order to quash creative diversity. It will fail, but it is part of a trend where tabletop roleplaying is blamed on societal ills which it actually combats. In the 1980s the shoe was on the other cultural foot and it was a Satanic Panic. These days the language has changed but not the invasive and media driven hysteria. This type of culture is directly related to the corporatization of the most popular franchise in the hobby-and it is used to make itself look cutting edge and cast doubt on the legitimacy of its competitors while assimilating itself to the world view of a human resources department. Following in the footsteps of Marvel, Disney, etc, an awkward attempt is made by a franchise to look superficially diverse without changing any of the suburb-safe Anglo-Protestantism that fuels increasingly stale intellectual properties. The true purpose of this turn to progressive marketing for corporate is to be able to imply any criticism of their product is not about the product’s quality but rather the moral foibles of a misguided and pRoBlEmAtIc fanbase.

 You do not have to be stuck with DnD, Wizards of the Coast, or Hasbro, however. Especially when its best attribute, the open gaming license, might be about to be heavily curtailed or revoked. This may even include the company revoking the rights to already existing spin off properties made by third party creators and then seizing them and selling them themselves.

But now the alternative games can grow their numbers and the hobby can remain strong as it lets a thousand games go their own way from a stifling shared origin. Like the worlds of Jack Vance’s Gaian Reach, there are now enough of tabletop gaming alternatives with their own distinctive culture that they can diverge and hopefully avoid the gray sludge effect of post-TSR DnD’s trying to appeal to everyone and therefore not really appealing to any particular core group. The point is that there should be no hegemonic replacement because there shouldn’t be a catch all game in the first place. There should be different tones, systems, and playstyles. This encourages creative production and small business while also discouraging the missionary drive for mass assimilation and formulaic and predictable experiences or a company trying to please too many people at once and robbing its products of their original appeal.

With all that in mind I would now like to list some alternatives I either have experience running myself or have heard enough about from people I trust to at least talk about. It is my hope that at least a handful of people who might never have tried an RPG other than DnD (Or never tried one at all) might come across this via keyword search and find out about something new that could interest them and keep them away from getting sucked into the unfolding nightmare of OneDnD by default.

First, let us start with the biggest gap being left at one’s table if they are defecting from the worlds biggest roleplaying game. That of a modern system with a strong action emphasis and the potential to play in high fantasy settings with a large degree of customization. The clear winner on this front is my new favorite game which came out in 2015 but I only discovered about a year ago: Shadow of the Demon Lord. The world is ending due to supernatural cataclysm and the very fabric of reality tears itself apart, so what better thing to do than to try to survive long enough to be as terrifying as the world around you? SotDL is its own game, but in effect it basically operates as a Berserk-style of TTRPG. Nightmare monsters roam and societies become corrupted so your only real choice is to band together into the kind of people who can meet such monsters toe-to-toe. This translates mechanically a fast and brutal combat system with the deadly and simple sensibilities of an old school game and the slick modern mechanics of a new game. Of all games I have played, it has the best advantage/disadvantage mechanic (called boons and banes) which enables a degree of variation and nuance few others do. This game also comes with a post-apocalyptic expansion to add Road Warrior style themes (which I am currently using for my campaign) and a closely related but technically separate game called Punkapocalyptic to flesh out such themes even more. Since it is my personal view that post-apocalyptic settings are the best campaigns for open world and random generation, all of these materials are useful to harvest in my current game master phase of embracing the random, the hexgrid, and the dice generated dungeon. Additionally, the creator’s greater library of related systems will expand later this year with his more family friendly (most settings really like gore and body horror) and general audience Shadow of the Weird Wizard-something that should come out at just the right time to soak up some disaffected DnD players.

If, unlike me, you prefer crunchier more rules-intensive systems but with a similar flow to that described above, consider Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, which tries to model the pace of its gameplay off of the highs and lows of 1930s sword and sorcery pulps and has a strong dedication to its source material being accurately portrayed.

Now let us turn to a different type of game. The one that has dominated most of my life. That of the investigatory and skills-based game. First are foremost of these is Call of Cthulhu. While not my first game as a player, it was the first I ever ran as a game master-and to this day the one I run the most. My love for this game could be an entire blog entry in its own right, but if you know anything about Lovecraft and how learning about the eldritch cosmos takes a massive toll on human sanity you can probably guess how this game works. Players literally drive themselves mad trying to solve mysteries (or running away from things they couldn’t possibly handle). CoC is a game of percentile dice where the most useful skill could be Library Use and the least useful the combat related options. The best game masters run in the 1920s and 1930s over the modern day, of course. Having a party that wants to play normies in an un-normie world running away from things constantly lest they die and losing their minds is basically peak weird fiction good time.

I have heard good things about Mothership, which has a similar system but in space science fiction setting and is more open ended about what you do with it, but not having yet played it these are things I cannot vouch for myself. Same with Traveler which eschews horror themes for pure exploration. Another thing I have yet to run but have read is the post-apocalyptic Degenesis which you can download here for free.

The third and final game I am going to mention as being worth to get the full bolded font treatment in The Dying Earth RPG. This, and games like it, are a third type of option where the players are often pitted as much against each other as antagonists outside of the party. Additionally, the core dynamic is one of multiple countering forms of pettifoggery (yes, including pettifoggery itself as a skill) to emulate the style of Jack Vance’s pompous self-serving characters. DE rewards players for wit and cunning, be it against their own allies or mutual foes. It strives to play very rules light while also asking much from its participants in a collaborative farce. Mechanically this is the easiest game I have ever played, but in terms of quick wits and player input it remains unmatched.

While it is a mechanical system I am not a huge fan of, I would also like to shout out the first ttrpg I ever played back in middle school (that wasn’t Second Edition DnD anyway), Werewolf the Apocalypse. White Wolf as a company really seemed to be the big thing in the very goth-fused mid and late 90s before burning out rapidly and seeming to mostly live through (pc) gaming franchises since. Its World of Darkness setting, of which Werewolf is a (the best) part, is highly evocative to many and serves as a good modern-action setting for those who like urban supernaturalism.

Because I have banged on about the Old School Renaissance (OSR) scene before, and also because it might fall under this new Hasbro-inspired weirdness with the open gaming license, I won’t talk about it much here. I will simply state that if you want to check out the real old school but still very much DnD derived small press scene, Old School Essentials has the authentic Boomer experience down perfectly and Mork Borg shows how experimental the genre can become.

The options are out there and they are waiting. We as a society need collaborative imaginative games to help us escape from late-stage neoliberalism and think outside the confines of corporate fiat while practicing the cooperative skills that help us respond to random events. The decline of the DnD franchise should not be seen as the end, but rather a challenge to explore new options. I hope in my own small way I have helped you do just that here.

For additional reference I will now list just a few youtube channels and podcasts I believe may be of service to game masters and players alike as they look for alternatives and/or inspiration:

Seth Skorkowsky– Excellent GM advice, small press game reviews, and a strong focus on Call of Cthulhu. This is my favorite one.
Dave Thaumavore RPG Reviews-Small press and indie reviews, extremely thorough. His multi-episode run down of Degenesis is especially good.

Questing Beast– OSR reviews, covers a lot in a famously diverse and expansive subset.

Vintage RPG Podcast– Often hilarious coverage of forgotten about supplements, spin offs, and questionable decisions (Dallas, the RPG anyone?) by older game editions.

Dungeons and Discourse– Already linked to in the post text, I only discovered this channel today but it seems great at analyzing everything that’s going on with DnD at the moment.

Captcorajus– Strong 1E DnD history focus but with plenty of indie/OSR reviews and occasional other content.

Dm Nel– Shadow of the Demon Lord focused channel with some episodes explaining the rules and mechanics but most on lore.

Tabletop RPGs and Understanding Chaotic Probability

/ geotrickster / 4 Comments
The gamemaster screen for the excellent Mörk Borg

Chaos Theory is often misunderstood by those who have never actually looked at it to be the simple triumph of randomness over order. It is in fact the natural replication of order, but in an imperfect and ever-evolving way whose specifics are unpredictable but its patterns recognizable. Outlier events dominate when they occur, but are rare. Nothing is certain but patterns exist. A humanities equivalent might be ‘History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.’

It has become increasingly apparent to me that explaining the deficiencies in how dominant ideologies of the present day process events needs a simple and readily accessible analogue for the general populace. Sure, my habit of blaming the extreme and (supposedly) opposite wings of monotheism and postmodernism for being the partners of maintaining an obsolete neoliberal order in our present age of global stupidity and breakdown is something I maintain is correct, but its also inaccessible to many. To get why I have this opinion requires an explanation of historical events and materialist philosophy that most people would not be interested in, if they even have the time for it. People know something is wrong, and they know that most of the people hired to explain these concerns away are lying to them or out of touch. They also know that many of the people proposing alternatives are very intense and extreme. Thoughtful but not formally educated people generally find the extremism of wingnut rhetoric and the hollow rear guard denials of unhinged centrism equally alienating. Surely, there is no panacea for our problems. Likewise, we clearly have to start looking further afield than the presently acceptable and ascribed solutions. Absolutism and relativism both are failures when taken to be universal principles. Abraham and Derrida both have much to answer for in their own special ways. Philosophy, politics, even the ways people communicate are hobbled. As do those with money and power who patroned them for their own ends. Probability, not certainty is the most important thing that must be accounted for by anyone who wishes to have a sensible opinion.

So how do you introduce the idea of a pragmatic probability to a general audience? By talking about real life places where it applies. Where both chance and skill interact together to create a situation where preparing and improving oneself is rewarded, but always under the knowledge that the roll of the die or the shuffle of the cards has final say. You can improve your odds always, but you cannot achieve certainty even a you do so. This can be analogized in many ways. Gambling, sculpture, game theory, the study of active volcanoes, traditional wargaming, your grandma playing Bejeweled. The way it should be talked about is determined by the nature of your own audience as well as what you know best on your own terms.

For me that is tabletop role playing games. At least, outside of geopolitics. But once again, more people are likely to be familiar with the former than the latter-especially when it comes to the fundamentals of practice. These are games where someone sets up a story and other players go through it not unlike a multiplayer computer game, but with the final determinator being not a software program but the actual game master, a human as capable of dynamic response as the players are.

I was introduced to tabletop RPGs as a kid in the mid-90s with Second Edition Dungeons and Dragons, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, and Call of Cthulhu. By my early teens around Y2K I was already running Call of Cthulhu games as a ‘Keeper’, better known as a Dungeon Master (from DnD terminology) and henceforth referred to as a Game Master to include all potential games. I have played, and most often ran, games ever since in a variety of systems. Call of Cthulhu remaining my constant favorite with many others jockeying for my affection right below it. I tend to prefer more tone and story driven games to ‘crunchy’ rules-heavy ones, but as my Edinburgh-based former Pathfinder team can attest, I am also capable of running the more war-gamey ones as well. But even with my less complex preferences, it is important to me to run a game where dice rolls and chance play a major part so that the experiences transcends mere interactive storytelling and predictability.

Dice go beyond just pass/fail and enter into a new realm where there are multiple kinds of successes and failures and varieties of responses. The non-mathematical storytelling element that responds to roll results allows both the game master and the player to think far more creatively than any computer game could allow. At the same time, the random element means that no one is fully in control. What emerges from this interaction between fate and human input is something neither entirely determined nor entirely free. One in which dice might doom the best prepared players and spare the most incompetent, but only as outlier events. You can never achieve certainty, but you can increase your odds through smart builds and smart play. Sometimes by a little, sometimes by a lot. Over time, the proportion of players who play wisely (as well as creatively) will be the ones more rewarded. Not only in enjoyment of the game, but in material benefits to their character in the game-world.

Even games where the players are pretty much guaranteed to be doomed the longer they play, such as Mörk Borg or Call of Cthulhu, this can serve as a kind of death analogy. We are all going to die one day so why try to maximize performance? Well, because you make gains along the way anyway-at least for a time. You’ll think back on your story of how you got there as you die, most likely. Its not about the destination but the people you met along the way. Sure, the knowledge gained in Call of Cthulhu will drive your character stark raving mad, but it is still knowledge. And knowledge can be many things from power, to a greater appreciation of the arts, to a lessening of the fear of failure. Having a character that survived long enough in that famously lethal game to become a stark raving mad and phobia-riddled savant of occult lore with an impressive library of forbidden tomes is one of my greatest accomplishments as a player.

But for most people who don’t share my pseudo-tantric black metal world view this might not be so effective. That is fine, as most tabletop rpgs aren’t like the examples above. In traditional fantasy or science fiction games one gains power and riches the longer they survive and keep adventuring. From the many Old School Renaissance games up through present day DnD Fifth Edition (the best and most accessible DnD version hence its surging popularity right now), there is enough danger and reversal to keep you on the your toes but the rewards are worth the attempt by any standard. Perhaps most interestingly, there also exists a variety of games between these poles that do a good job modeling both the power fantasy element of traditionally popular games with the more morally ambiguous and complication-riddled side of the darker ones. Here I am thinking about Werewolf: The Apocalypse (and other World of Darkness settings), Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of, and The Dying Earth RPG. These are games that specifically work into the gameplay immense ups and downs to create a roller coaster of experiences where the character is always growing, but not necessarily in a linear fashion or through constant victory.

The Conan game, in a great nod to its source material, actually has specific mechanics for both incentivizing winning gold and fame and also having to use these acquired resources to recover mental and physical health through debauchery and carousing. If you want to keep gaining stats you have to keep adventuring, but if you want to keep adventuring you have to recover through squandering your ill-gotten gains. On top of this is the momentum/doom system where successes lead to more die for rolls and failures compound into more counter-die for the game master to use against the players. The players and game master end up trading literal dice to increase their probabilities in rolls they want to fudge up, turning near misses to near hits (or vice versa). Fate can be played with, but only temporarily as somewhere down the line ones accumulated dice-karma will come back for them. The Dying Earth RPG takes an even more direct approach, with all rolls being based around six sided die with 1 being an critical fail and six being a stunning success, greatly increasing the odds of a ridiculous outcome in any direction. The game is built specifically so that epic failure is as entertaining and almost as desirable as epic success. The GM rewards players who play into their extreme results with a sense of panache with experience points, regardless of if those results are a failure or a success.

Even traditional games on the ends of the tone spectrum have variants that fudge the line. DnD has the Planescape and Dark Sun settings to create a darker and more surreal or survivalistic tone to its normally high fantasy system. Call of Cthulhu has Pulp Cthulhu, which adds an bit of Indiana Jones style punching out cultists and traveling the world for treasure to the staples of madness and unspeakable horrors lurking under the surface. Interwar dungeon delving with a cosmic horror tone.

The fact is that tabletop gaming still does what its more popular computer based descendants cannot do in both randomness and in player input. (There is one possible almost-exception to this rule, however). Anyone who has played-and especially ran-these games enough knows no plan for a module, be it the module itself from the game master or the player’s tactics at tackling it, ever survives fully intact upon contact with the random elements. But at the same time, a well designed module or player tactical plan is going to work far more often than a poorly thought out approach. Much like navigating life, politics, the sciences, metaphysics, the stock market, or even the overall span of societies, tabletop rpgs show in a clearly communicable way to a general audience the interplay of forces both outside and within a person’s control and how those come together to create a probability-dominated world where nothing ever turns out as you plan it. This unpredictability is part of the intrinsic nature of the game and usually makes perfect sense of even outlier events in hindsight. Dice results may disappoint or elate you, but they don’t lie. And how you respond to those stark numbers rolled out on the table can be everything. There is always an excuse for failure at something challenging, but never one for not being prepared as much as possible before the challenge roll.