caffeinatedOtter

Caffeinated Otter

@caffeinatedOtter

  • he/him

You're here for the fic; all of it is also on my personal site.

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Personal website (fic mirror):
brain-implant.tech/
itch:
llemoi.itch.io/
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www.fallenlondon.com/profile/Refrangeline
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caffeinatedOtter
@caffeinatedOtter

Someone can probably get a essay, one day, out of examining the trend toward designers making solo TTRPGs during Covid; but it's also interesting, if less obviously cause-and-effect, to watch a bunch of TTRPG folks I know of collectively steer away from randomisers.

I have to try to be clear and honest about what I'm looking at when I see someone whose games I know, at least by reputation, say things like "version 2.0 of it is diceless now", because my knee-jerk reaction is "is that honestly still an RPG?" and that's, y'know, I don't want to be judgemental or shitty about it. I'm not saying someone's pure-deterministic TTRPG mechanics aren't any sort of game, just that...idk.

It seems to me that collaborative, on-the-fly storytelling is a huge component of what's traditionally considered a TTRPG, and the thing that makes it an RPG instead of, y'know, simply storytelling, is the fact of the game mechanics; TTRPG story as ergodic cybertext.

If you start pulling the game mechanics out, at some point, comrade, you're just ficcing with extra steps. Which is how I feel about most solo TTRPGs.

Which, y'know, when I just want to sit down and write I can sit down and write? So here I am, trying to be clear and honest in my own mind and not shit on anyone's fun, and not start squinting at people and saying "we had a thing for that. It's called 'a fic prompt'"

idk.

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in reply to @caffeinatedOtter's post:

Lichtenstein
@Lichtenstein

Note that in practice I don't really like these games for similar reasons - and aside from wanting there to be some game in my game, I find these maximum-storytelling barely-a-systems to get infuriatingly masturbatory real quick.

Having said that, I'm always on a lookout for some randomless (as well as fiddling with a bunch of unsatisfactory prototypes) because I simultaneously think that the mainstream % chance to hit approach to doing stuff low-key has a really big component of cargo culting D&D because that's how RPGS were always done.

The thing is, a chance to hit approach doesn't really reflect how doing things is in real life: you either have the means and competence to do a thing or not, and if not it's largely a matter of how much time and effort you can commit to trying (which, admittedly, might often be prohibitive).

Now, where the usual chance approach works if the attempt is framed against a very specific limit - can you do this in time? can you hit the goblin before they make a move? can you do it the first time, there's no second chances on jumping between rooftops. This works well enough if your game is essentially an action movie - like D&D is - but a lot of games, especially indies, are nominally about very different things but fundamentally basing their mechanics in context of action-but-really-combat-most-of-the-time.

Much like the use of playing cards in ttrpgs - which I deem superior in theory, but don't really like any existing implementation in practice - I want to believe there's a solution to diceless gaming that someone will stumble onto one day, just the right balance of open and codified when it comes to stacking advantages to overcome static targets or something.

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