Elements of a Key 2

 Welcome to Part 2 of "Elements of a Key". I actually had this totally written when I posted Part 1 and intended to post it the following day, but I'm terrible at blogging so its posting was delayed by ~7 months.

Last time, I cut up all the various types of information that a GM might need when running a key--from immediate things like the sense impressions the PCs receive upon first encountering the key to more conceptual things like NPC motivation or instincts. These elements need to be decided on at some point, either when a module is being written, when the GM is prepping, or improvisationally mid-play.

Let's take a closer look at which elements are best suited for being nailed down during which stages of prep and what the trade-offs are of each way of doing things.

The Stages of Prep

There are, as stated above, three main stages an adventure goes through:

• Being written by the module's author. This is where the text of the adventure is created.
• Being prepped by the GM. This is where the GM puts the adventure in their head and thinks through how they'll actually run it.
• At the table. This is where the GM and players run the adventure, and where the information of the key actually gets used.

Obviously, not all steps will be reached every time. For a GM running their own adventures, the writing/prep stages are one and the same. For someone trying to run a module straight from a book, the prep stage gets skipped. In many cases, we end up reading modules that we will never actually run. For convenience, we'll talk as if all three stages are occurring.

Any unit of information about the key that comes out in play gets created during one of these three steps. So, what are some of the dynamics at play that make some stages better suited for certain elements of a key than others?

There are two big dividing lines here: before play/during play and invented by author/invented by GM. 

Before Play vs During Play

Meaningful vs Trivial

One of the easiest and most obvious dynamics is that you should try to save your prep for things that matter. You only have limited time and ink for writing and prep, so facts about the key that have no impact on gameplay should be saved for mid-play improvisation.

The colors of the curtains, the names of background characters, how many skittles are in the jar on the wizard's desk--these are unlikely to have any impact on play, so it's safe to put those all firmly in the "at the table" stage.

I'd argue that lore/backstory also fits into this category, as well. The fact that the bartender was an orphan who was adopted by a kindly old priest is also likely to be trivial to play, unless that kindly old priest is sitting on some leverage-point in the adventure. These details are (marginally) harder to improvise at the table than "color of the curtains"-style facts, but they're still not a good use of a module-writer's limited wordcount.

Fair vs Unfair

See: BLORB Principles

Similar to the above, one of the main reasons it's important to prep keys rather than improvise them is to avoid arbitrariness. Anything about the key that is a significant danger to the players should be established before play, as should anything that is an obvious and significant benefit to the players.

Once the players are already embedded in the adventure, it's impossible to be fair when making a creative decision. If the players are hurt and looking for an exit and the next room has not been prepped, it's very difficult to objectively and fairly decide whether the room contains a monster or the exit. If the GM makes these decisions in the moment, the game leans towards playing to the GM's whims and sympathies instead of the situation itself.

Enmeshed vs Independent

It's difficult to improvisationally create ideas that span multiple keys, but it's easy to think up one-offs on the fly. The more that an element in a key is tied to other elements in other keys, the better a fit it is to be pre-written.

These connections can either be explicit (the cult leader has the key to the squid room) or implicit (there's a metal lock in room 3, a glass bottle in room 5, and a pool of high-power acid in room 8). If anything, the implicit connections are the harder ones to improvise on the fly, but they're also some of the ones that can really make a module pop; one of the main things I think about when writing a dungeon is trying to ensure that there are as many of these latent lines of potential quietly seeded through it as possible (with trust that the players will find even more I hadn't thought of).

Bespoke vs Cliché

See: Against the Wicked City - Conceptual Density

There's an autopilot default to how any given key element will get unpacked at the table. The goblin yells "Intruders!" and attacks. The dwarf loves ale. The secret door is opened by a concealed panel. When the GM doesn't have any better ideas (due to being put on the spot, inexperience, fatigue, etc), this is how the key gets introduced. Cliché has gravity, and without active effort improvisation naturally flows downhill towards it.

The more cliché an idea is, less useful it is to include it in a key's written description; if that's how the key was going to get unpacked anyway then you might as well save the ink. A good module helps nudge the GM out of their habits and towards modes of play they wouldn't have tried by themselves.

Hard vs Soft

I'm a believer in the "cruel prepper/generous GM" style of OSR play--I tend to prep overwhelming odds and difficult problems for my players to encounter, but then tend to default to a 'say yes' style of responding to their hairbrained schemes mid-play. If I want there to be some hard barrier to player success, I generally need to prep it beforehand because my mid-session rulings tend to lean permissive. If the wizard lab is shielded from scrying and teleport spells or if the guard absolutely will not settle for a bribe of less than 100gp, I need to prep those facts before play begins.

Related, I find that if I'm not laying down hard NPC desires and motivations beforehand it becomes easy for scenes to stall out if the players opt for non-combat. NPCs who want things and are willing to use the players to try to attain them are great for driving forward play.

Sublime vs Ordinary

Not every element of a key needs to be interactive; some elements exist to make the players (including the GM) feel like they're on the edge of something much greater and bigger than themselves. Mountain-sized corpses of dead gods, abstract Lovecraftian horrors, or even just a lovingly described ordinary situation can provoke an emotional response in a way that lives outside of the action players can actually take.

This may live in the form of well-crafted prose (Cool Words from last time), illustrations, or simply resonant concepts. If you think you're onto something that will have an impact on the GM or players when they encounter it, that makes it more worthwhile to nail it down before play.

For each of the above, the distinction is between the 'improvised' layer of play and the 'prep/writing' one--they're all dynamics that make a certain element of a key a better fit for either being determined beforehand or improvised at the table (and therefore omitted from the key's written form).

There's a second distinction that's equally important but somewhat less discussed, however--the line between a module's written text and the GM's prep.

The contents of a module don't magically summon themselves into play; any idea written in a module must be read and internalized by the GM. This creates a strange dynamic where the best option is not, often, to make all the prep-important information in the module explicitly stated in words on the page; leaving some elements of the module implied can actually help the GM internalize the module's scenario by making them active participants in unpacking its implications and thinking the scenario through. These omissions also, of course, can save page space and make the module less onerous to read.

Let's look at a few dynamics that can help determine whether an element is best made explicit in a published module, implicitly suggested, or handled entirely by the GM. 

In Module vs Prepped

Concrete vs General

Nobody knows how a key is going to play out. If there's a goblin in a room, the players might try to fight it, befriend it, evade it, pretend to be a goblin at it, seduce it, sacrifice it on the altar in room 7, and so on. The GM needs to have an understanding of what the deal is with each element in the key, to the point that they can run with any of these unexpected directions play might take.

So, that means that it's better for a module to give generalized descriptions than concrete one-off actions and events, right? "The goblin is crass and violent" is better than "the goblin sits in filth, idly tearing the wings off flies"?

Actually, no--concrete details are usually going to be better overall. The GM does need to have a general sense of that goblin's personality, but they can get that just fine from concrete and specific actions. Showing, rather than telling, does double duty--it both communicates the general while giving the GM actual examples to use in play. If anything, the concrete examples convey more subtle detail for the GM to play off of than a general personality trait would.

This dynamic reverses somewhat with player-driven action, however. Describing a chain of "if the players do A, the result is B" is generally less usable than simply describing the key's contents as they are. "The basin is full of strong acid (1d6 damage/round)" is stronger writing than "If the players touch the green liquid in the basin, they take 1d6 acid damage."

Fun to Prep vs Work to Prep

Coming up with cool ideas is fun. Nailing down exactly how everything fits together, making sure it's all internally consistent, filling in mundane but important details, and testing it to make sure it generally plays enjoyably is work. Ideally, when I buy a module, I'm buying it to take work off of my plate.

That's often not how modules get written, of course. Many of the most beloved modules out there are almost entirely cool ideas with very little help in converting them to use at the table. This makes sense--cool ideas are much more inspiring and fun to read than mundane details, and most people experience most modules primarily as inspirational readings. God knows I've read way more modules than I've been able to get to the table.

Still, the dream is there--work that needs to get done, details that need to be thought through, and dynamics that need to be designed should be written by the module writer instead of being foisted on the GM.

Fussy vs Intuitive

Modules live double duty as inspirational art and reference documents. If the module includes complex or data-driven info, it's nice to provide ways of making that information easily referenceable. Monster statblocks, wandering encounter tables, exact coin counts in treasure hoards, complex procedures--these are all hard for a GM to hold in their head, and so they should be written in the module. Bonus points if they're presented in a form that makes them easier to find mid-play without sacrificing readability.

System-Specific vs System-Agnostic

There are a lot of systems out there, and if you're publishing a module for a vaguely OSR audience you have no idea which system they'll be using. Is it better to tailor a module to a specific system or to leave all the hard mechanics up to the GM to come up with during prep? To what extent should you use mechanical language vs stick to pure narrative description?

All methods are reasonable, but I personally prefer fully supporting one system. I feel that it's easier to convert from one system to another than it is to come up with stats out of nothing. At a minimum, I find giving the relative level/HD of NPCs and monsters helpful in avoiding arbitrariness.

Page-Turner vs Dry

Modules are a lot of reading to prep. It's nice if you can write them in a way that makes them fun to read. Elements that enflame the GM's curiosity, that keep them excited to keep reading, justify their own inclusion in a module. Conversely, drain the fun from reading a module should be avoided.

Of course, this dynamic often doesn't align some others above. What's fun on a first read isn't always what's useful in a reference document. None of these dynamics line up perfectly aligned with the others--every author must choose which to emphasize and which to sacrifice in a given work. There's no one golden style for module-writing, just an endless series of trade-offs. 

This post is all still very theoretical, but I hope reading through it has been a good chance to reflect on some of the specific ways that modules are useful. Following these dynamics blindly will almost certainly not help you write better keys--the only thing that can make you better at writing is gaining experience writing and reading. My hope is that by thinking about these elements and dynamics as you study existing keys (either written by others or yourself), you can sharpen your writing senses more quickly. Theory never replaces practice, but it can augment the benefits of practice.

I have a rough sketch of a third post in this series where we can look at existing modules and see how they navigated all of these elements and dynamics. Will it be posted this year? This decade? Ever? Only time will tell.

Introducing Odd Goblin

 I've been using a pocket system, Odd Goblin, for the last year and change and it's been remarkably fun and easy to run dungeon crawl adventures with. I think it's time for me to put it out here on the internet.

You can find it on itch, here.

What's with the name?

Odd Goblin's full name is "Odd Goblin, Free In The Forsaken Dark", a mash-up of all the sources it drew inspiration from. These are. . .

(Into the) Odd: Quick and decisive combat rules. Largely compatible with adventures/etc written for Into the Odd/Cairn/etc.

Goblin (Laws of Gaming): 36 GLOG-compatible classes, each built around a skillset that emphasizes giving the player tools to play with over numeric mechanical improvements.

Free (Kriegsspiel): A core resolution system that hews close to the fiction--you roll d10 and the number you get answers the question "How well does this go on a scale from 1-10?". As a system this is obviously not fully FKR, but the philosophy was inspirational during development.

(Forged) In The Dark: The initial version of this was a ItO/FitD mashup, with early drafts of this having a much more FitD skill system. It's evolved a lot since then, but the inspiration is still visible.

Forsaken (Megadungeon): Sam[LINK] ran a megadungeon campaign where each magic user class had tight and thematic set of 6 spells, more about utility than direct combat ability. It worked great so I stole it. Also the inspiration for the print-and-play format.

Why should you try it?

I run an open table largely visited by people new to roleplaying, where I need to be able to make a character and teach how to play in ~5 minutes, but also where the system gives enough to grab onto for a new roleplayer to find inspiration. Odd Goblin threads that needle better than any other system I've found--the basic mechanics are dead simple in a way that orients play towards "Imagine you're in the situation--what would you do?", and the character classes are meaty and full of fun tools to play with.

The core resolution mechanic is built to be simple but adaptable to the fiction--it always generates a number between 1-10, answering the question "How does this go on a scale from 1-10?". It's flexible and narrative-first, but also easily moddable on the fly. Setting a pass/fail target number is quick and easy, but for more nuanced situations you can just roll and improv the consequences based on the result in a more granular way, or even apply more esoteric dice tricks to when desired. I've found that this is already the way most people play games with binary skill systems, so Odd Goblin just leans into the way people intuitively want to play.

I'm leaning into my lack of art budget, so the game is designed specifically to be printed out and made available as a set of loose paper on the table. Pages are modular and cover 1-2 topics each, and character classes can easily be handed to the players playing them.

Odd Goblin characters tend to be powerful in utility but fragile. Pure combat spells and abilities are relatively uncommon and HP totals are low, but most classes have a few tricks up their sleeves that can fundamentally change how they navigate a dungeon. The system is best paired with non-linear adventures, where 'breaking the dungeon' is a feature and not a bug.

I've been running it for a megadungeon campaign at my school, and tend to release a big update between semesters. It's been incredibly fun and flexible, so for anyone else who loves dungeon crawl games primarily oriented around problem solving using weird tools, I encourage you to take a look! Let me know what you think in the comments

Books [Verb] Play

Edit: A friend pointed out that the original name (The Verbs of Play) didn't make sense, since these are all verbs that books are doing, not play. I realized I wrote the title to the post first and never updated it to match what got written, so I'm just doing that now.

The following is in response to Seraphim Seraphina's excellent post "What do we mean when we say a game “supports” play?". I want to engage with the question of a thousand arguments: Does Dungeons & Dragons support cozy coffee-shop play?

Seraphim argues that we should keep an open mind to the ways in which different RPG systems support different types of play, ending with this addendum: "In conversation about the post, I've realized there is a question I very much prefer over "Does X support Y?", which is "What structure does X have that shapes Y?""

I want to add on to this a bit, taking a shot at taxonomizing the ways that RPG books shape play. I'm hoping that by naming these, it'll make it easier in the future for me to see these at work in the designs of myself and others.

The Universal Roleplaying Engine

Note that above I specifically says "the ways RPG books shape play". Many of these arguments on the ways systems matter get derailed by a conflation of system (the process by which contributions to the fiction get made) and books (collections of words you buy from a store or download). Here, I want to look at how the books (specifically rulebooks) we use to shape play influence the sessions we run, but to be able to do that I need to draw a distinction between the rulebook itself and the act of play that it's being attached to.

The vast majority of RPGs come with an incredibly powerful but often ignored set of baseline procedures: the players all imagine a situation together and take turns making contributions to the fiction, which the group then accepts, rejects, or modifies. This fundamental conversation-procedure underlies nearly all RPGs, and in my opinion is responsible for lion's share of the fun of this hobby--the specific books you use might add value on top of the basic conversation, but this is where the real magic happens.

This basic procedure, by itself, facilitates a tremendous range of play. Any playstyle that boils down to "imagine a situation and propose what happens next" is supported by default. Freeform storytelling, common-sense problem solving, conversations between characters, and so on basically all come for free with any roleplaying system. On some level, the question of "does D&D support cozy coffee-shop roleplay" is obvious: of course it does, it's a roleplaying game.

However, this isn't to say that all RPG rulesets are equivalent and that system is utterly meaningless, just that RPG rulesets are less horse and more reins--the power is coming from the basic procedure of roleplaying--from the creativity and imagination and experiences of the players--and the books you add on to it are just trying to tame and direct that power towards more controlled aims.

Okay, so does system matter? Yeah. Does book matter? Sure, it exerts an influence. But how do RPG books exert influence on play? The following is a list of verbs, each describing one of the methods RPG books shape play. Many overlap to varying degrees, but I think there's value in the distinctions I'm making here.

The Verbs

Inspire

Books inspire play. For play to even occur, the player need to desire it. RPG books solicit players to roleplay--they create desires where none existed before and enflame existing desires.

The importance of this should not be underestimated. RPGs are entertainment--they only exist so long as people desire to play them. No matter how good a book might be at any of these other verbs, if it fails to spark the imagination gameplay simply will not occur.

The pitch of "do you want to be a member of a secret government taskforce that fights against unfathomable Lovecraftian horrors?" makes me go 'Oh hey, that sounds fun. I should play that.'

The art of a cool elf swinging a sword at a goblin makes me go 'Oh hey, that looks fun. I want to be that elf.'

The fancy bespoke tarot card-driven resolution mechanic at the heart of the system makes me go 'Oh hey, that looks clever. I should play the game so I can see how it works.'

The brand recognition that triggers when I see 'Dungeons & Dragons' on the book's cover makes me think that this is something I should try out.

Align

Books align play. Once a group of players have decided to play a RPG, their expectations for what the game is going to look like need to match up enough that conflicts don't crop up. A rulebook can act as a north-star, orienting expectations for the table as a whole.

Players need to be able to more or less predict how their contributions will be handled--if a certain action their character takes is setting-appropriate, or what type of roll using what stats will occur from an action, or if a certain element of the setting is 'theirs' to control. A rulebook can smooth over expectations between players, reducing the likelihood of disagreements.

The art style on the cover of Mork Borg makes me assume I should prep a scenario involving more grit and violence and less sentimentality and coziness.

The rules tell me that I can control my PC's actions but not those of NPCs.

The book says I get XP for winning combats, so I assume I will be getting into lots of fights and don't make my character be a pacifist.

The fact that 'Lockpicking' is written as a skill on my character sheet makes me assume lockpicking will feature into this play.

The skill system and the fact that I have a +10 to Lockpicking make me expect that when I try to pick a lock in the fiction I will roll dice to determine the outcome and be relatively likely to succeed.

I know that you take 1d6 damage per 10' you fall, so I know that failing to jump between these ledges will result in me taking no more or less than 3d6 damage.

Incentivize

Books incentivize play. This is really just a hybrid of 'inspire' and 'align', but it feels worth making its own entry since it looms so large in most designer's minds. As soon as a rulebook has rules progression, it exerts a strong incentive for the players to do whatever it takes to mechanically progress.

It's a fairly common attitude for RPG designers to think of the system they write primarily as a network of incentives that lead players towards interesting choices. You get XP for combat, which leads the players to fight things, which leads them to use the finely tuned combat minigame.

Incentives are weird in TTRPGs, though, because the fiction itself contains infinite possibility for incentives--often ones that are much more memorable and engaging than anything that could come pre-packaged in a book. Wanting to rescue a beloved NPC, take revenge, claim a prize, attain a title, etc are all implicitly supported by the basic procedure of play. However, they require buy-in to the fiction in a way that only really happens through play--a huge advantage of book-incentives is how they can inspire desire to engage even before the game has started.

I get XP for killing, so I want to get into lots of fights.

I need 3 successes and 3 failures on my Foraging skill check to be able to rank it up, so I often try to forage even in difficult situations.

The book says to award 1xp to the player who had the most dramatic scene this session, so I intentionally put myself into messy and dramatic situations I otherwise wouldn't.

Challenge

Books challenge play. The rules to a game add friction to it, prevent the players from attaining their goals in a perfunctory and unsatisfying manner, force them into unexpected directions. They allow the players to strive and pursue their desires, to work their creative and analytic muscles towards a purpose, to keep those desires fed and intoxicating--to let the players spend time existing in a state of pleasurable unfulfillment and exertion.

This is a fun verb to argue about online; analyzing the math on the mechanical side of challenges/player abilities/resolution mechanics is a relatively tidy process--it's not hard to demonstrate that a mechanic doesn't work the way that it was seemingly intended to, or that one overpowered option renders the other options moot, but the concept goes beyond that.

The book says I can't just narrate myself killing the dragon in one strike. I need to engage with the combat system and deal 100 damage in order to slay the dragon and claim its treasure hoard.

The prompt in this journaling RPG says that I need to describe the argument I get into with my betrothed. I wasn't planning on having that happen, so now I need to think more deeply about my character, my vision of them, and who they are when put in unexpected situations.

Elide

Books elide play. To paraphrase the famous article, when the rules say that I can pick a lock by rolling 1d20, adding my Lockpicking skill score to it, and getting a 15+, then I don't need to think too hard about the details of lockpicking--the system just handwaves the details and says "the lock clicks open".

I won't dive into details on this one, since that ground has already been well-tread, except to say that this is one of those verbs can especially impact the suitability of a system for certain types of play.

When I attack the swordman, I don't need to describe what type of swing I do--I simply roll an attack and then damage and the swordman becomes nebulously that much closer to defeat. I can choose to offer that description, but it offers no impact onto the rest of play.

The rules say that when you walk into a room containing clues, roll 1d20 and add your Investigation score to it. The GM immediately tells you all of the clues to be found in this room with a Mystery Score of your result or less, and once you have found 10 clues they will reveal the solution to the mystery to you. This supports gameplay where you describe being a detective, but makes roleplaying as a detective--investigative problem solving using the player's deductive skills--all but impossible.

Limit

Books limit play. They reduce the options that players have to pre-designed lists. This act of shaving possibilities from play has many upsides--limitations are a large part of the context that players need in order to choose what actions to take, limiting possibility to tight lists reduces analysis paralysis, and the reduced possibility space allows for much tighter design. It also, obviously, limits play.

One verb I was debating adding to this list is "Lubricate," but it feels like it might just be a sub-verb to this one. A book can facilitate and ease play by limiting player options or offering them prompts in moments when they might otherwise stall out.

The rulebook says that I need to choose between being a human, elf, or dwarf. This makes the RAW book a bad fit for a campaign about being a unicorn.

When I make a move in Apocalypse World, it gives me a list of results to pick from as the consequences of my roll. This significantly lessens the possibility space and makes it less daunting for me to make creative contributions.

Knowing that this game is set in 1700s Venice means I know I can't pull out a cell phone.

Automate

Books automate play. To a greater or lesser extent, a rule system plays itself. Certain actions within the fiction kick off gameplay procedures that must be resolved at the table before the action can be contributed. Implicitly, the existence of incentives & optimal strategies within a system also results in a game that plays itself, where the task of the players is less to make choices and more to identify the 'correct' choice and then resolve all the resolution mechanics to keep the system moving.

This has positive and negative impacts on play. Those procedures can do good work in pacing out gameplay moments, can create the dynamics that the book designer wants, and even be pleasurable to watch in its own right, but they also push the players out of the process of play for the duration of their resolution. At worst, a game that plays itself relegates the players to the role of audience-bureaucrats, there to bask in the brilliance of the designer's vision and perform the busywork that must be done to keep the system chugging along.

I choose to attack the dragon. Play effectively pauses while I roll to-hit, do some quick math to see if I succeeded, roll damage, and see if the dragon dies from the wound. Because the dragon goes next and can probably one-shot me, everyone at the table feels highly emotionally invested in the outcome of each of these steps.

I have invested so many points into my Eldritch Blast ability that nothing else I can do is nearly as effective. On each of my turns in combat I cast Eldritch Blast.

When I make a character, I always put as many points as possible into my class's core stat, since it directly determines my effectiveness in most combat actions. Doing anything else would be playing sub-optimally.

Because it's the end of round four, I add three Red Tokens to the pile. This triggers the scene where I  flee from the orphanage-that-secretly-trains-assassins that raised me. I am prompted to describe my successful escape and offer a brief monologue on the nature of grief.

Distract

Books distract from play. If a ruleset incentivizes a certain set of activities, or if its mechanics spend a lot of time on certain procedures, other activities inherently become deemphasized. Every moment spent staring at character stats and rules, similarly, becomes a moment in which the player is not thinking about the fiction.

Minigames can be a lot of fun in a RPG, especially ones where the state of the fiction can still impact the minigame's flow (combat being a common example). Saying that a game's rules "distract" from play sounds negative, and it definitely can be (I generally prefer systems where I spend more time thinking about the game world and less time thinking about statblocks or mechanics), but there can also be a lot of pleasure in stepping aside from freeform play to act out a little gamified ritual at times. 

The main way to get XP in this game is combat, and each combat takes 2-3 hours to resolve. I don't have a lot of time in an average session to describe my character sitting at the coffee shop and savoring a chai latte.

I spend three green mana to gain an inspiration point, which I use to trigger my limit break. This gives me a point of luck, which I use to get a +2 to my attack roll.

Prepping a full four hours of roleplaying stuff for players to do is too much for the time I have to prep, so I'll seed a few fights in there that'll eat up some session time while still being fun.

Pace

Books pace out play. The rules and procedures you follow take time at the table to resolve, which can be used strategically to emphasize or deemphasize moments of play. Making momentous moments of gameplay intentionally more mechanically involved can allow for those moments to linger longer at the table, holding the players in a pleasurable sense of anticipation. Of course, too much crunch with too little at stake can drain all the momentum out of play.

Combat involves a real possibility of character death. If an entire fight was resolved in a single roll, being killed would feel jarringly anticlimactic.

Spending half an hour each time I level up looking at character build options is a fun little ritual that emphasizes the mechanical progress I'm making.

Opening a treasure chest and having the GM ask you to roll percentile dice to determine what items are within creates a moment of suspense and draws out the anticipation longer than having pre-determined contents prepared.

Derail

Books derail play. Every time a player contributes to the fiction, that contribution is inherently in line with the player's vision of the how the game should go.  Every time dice get rolled, there's a chance that the situation takes a turn in a direction that nobody at the table expected or intended. The book itself becomes a player at the table, making its own set of contributions.

This is one of the biggest qualities that a formal ruleset possesses that freeform roleplaying does not (although the collaborative storytelling will always inherently involve adapting your contributions to match those of others). How does a ruleset surprise its players?

When the goblin crits me and my character dies, it changes the story I was expecting to tell about them.

When I brag 'watch this' and then critically fumble my roll, my character stops being the cool badass I imagined and transforms towards being comic relief.

My character wants to be moral, but you need to consume 1 ration per day or suffer a level of Harm, they're stranded on a lifeboat with three other characters, and everyone's one missed meal from death. I wasn't planning on them starving to death or being a cannibal, but I guess one of those two is how this story goes now.

I usually evade monsters with illusions, but the book says that undead are immune to illusions, so I need to try something else to get past this room full of ghouls.

Contextualize

Books contextualize play. A bunch of facts about the world the game takes place in does not force the player down any one path, but having an existing world to react to has a massive impact on the choices the players choose to make with their future contributions.

Even rules not currently being used have a weight to them, bending people's perceptions of play even if they don't change the play itself. See Jay Dragon's Happy Little Life thought experiment.

The book says that the Forbidden Islands are ruled by someone named King Goblianus. I hate kings, so my goal for this campaign is to kill that guy.

I get XP for looting treasure, so I guess I'll go look for some treasure?

Endnote

This list isn't exhaustive, but I hope is somewhat helpful to anyone thinking about RPG system design as a checklist of alternate ways to think about game books. It can be very tempting to pick one lens of analysis and then trying to optimize solely on that one context, but any RPG book is always going to be performing many different simultaneous tasks in service of structuring play.

One thing to note is that most of the above verbs are not exclusive to the books being used; inspiration can come from an enthusiastic player inviting people to come over for a RPG night; alignment came come from the group discussing their expectations during a session 0; context accrues automatically as play proceeds and the world comes into focus. When you use a book-system to run a RPG, the promise it's making is that it will pitch in on each of these verbs in a way that is more thoughtful and less effortful than you doing them all yourself.

Looking back on this list through the "does D&D support cozy coffee-shop play" lens, I don't have a universal answer, but I do feel like I understand the question slightly better. The question can easily mean different things to different people--do you want a game that ritualizes the process of relaxing, where the game almost does it for you and you just bask in the process? Do you want a system where there are basically no rules and you just handle it all on vibes? Do you want one where the looseness of relaxing is contrasted against a larger context of strife and hardship? Do you want a character creation system that lasts a long time so you can spend time with the character mid-creation, or do you want one where the distracting process of writing down stats and abilities gets out of the way as quickly as possible? Do you want a tight incentive structure that guides players to the actions you want them to take, or do you want the players to be coming up with their own agendas? Are you more worried about getting players excited by dangling a popular brand in front of them, or are you more worried that the system will be distracting from play once it actually begins?

Elements of a Key 1

 I've been working on a soon-to-be-announced hexcrawl project with a few other people, and it's gotten me thinking about key design--more specifically what elements are valuable to include in a key that you're prepping and/or preparing to release for others to use. I figured I'd do a breakdown of all the information that a key (explicitly or implicitly) contains.

Key, in this context, just means any block of information describing a piece of a situation meant for play. Room keys and hex keys, but also to a lesser extent descriptions of monsters, NPCs, and general setting elements.

This list is meant to be as exhaustive as possible--what are all of the things that a key might need in order to be played out? Importantly, I'm not making a distinction (yet) between information that is decided by the key writer, the GM during prep, or the GM during play. Thinking through which types of key elements are best left to which stages (writing/prep/play) is the ultimate point of me writing this up, but this is long enough I need to save that for a future post.

General Information

The basics of a key. What do you tell to the players and when?

Immediate Sensory Impression

What is the immediate sensory impression received upon entering? Or, to put it more directly, what does the GM describe to the players upon first encountering the key?

"You enter a 30'x30' square room with a goblin in it, sitting atop a stained carpet."

Uncoverable Details

What is present in the key that requires some amount of exploration on the players' part to discover? Or, to put it more directly, what does the GM not describe to the players upon first entering the key? This contains both information likely to be relevant to play, and the answers to even the most inane questions the players might ask about the key.

"The stained carpet conceals a closed hatch leading downwards."

"The goblin's pockets contain 3 copper pieces."

"The goblin's name is Skronk Jr."

"The walls of the room appear to be carved limestone."

See Also: Hidden descriptions, via Landmark, Hidden, Secret

Immediate Response to Players

Similar to Immediate Sensory Impression, what happens the moment the players encounter the key? Does the presence of the players kick off some series of events?

"The goblin snarls, 'You've ruined your own lands, you'll not ruin mine!' and attacks."

Conditional Response to Players

Once the players start poking at things, what happens? Like Immediate Response to Players, but events that occur only if the players (or other forces) take certain actions.

"If the hatch is opened, the trap activates."

"If the players show a Worm Badge, the goblin lets them pass."

General Concept

What's the general deal with this key? If details need to get filled in about the key that weren't prepped, what basic concept should the GM visualize when improvising new details?

"The room is the lair of a goblin, tasked with defending the secret entrance to the goblin mines."

A Quick Aside

I hope that some of why I find this all interesting is already coming through. Once the players discover a key, all of these elements are needed to play it out--the scene opens with a sensory impression followed by an immediate response to players, as they players move through the key they uncover more details and trigger conditional responses, and as they prod at the key from unexpected angles the GM falls back on the general concept to improvise additional details.

Does that mean that a well-prepped key should explicitly contain all of these elements?

Almost certainly not.

Most of these can be inferred from each other. A good General Concept can imply everything else/a good Immediate Sensory Impression can imply the general concept/and so on. The GM needs to be able to do all of these during play, but it's overkill to include all in prep and/or writing. I'm doing this dissection largely to help me think through which of these elements are best come up with during which stages, and which elements are best stated directly vs. implied.

The Situation

Keyed descriptions exist within a moment in time. How does the hex describe how it might be on repeat visits?

The Temporary Situation

What in the key is happening just as the players first experience it? What won't be happening the next time they arrive?

"A child cries for help, surrounded by four hungry wolves."

"Six pilgrims pass through, on their way to visit the oracle to the south."

The Indefinite Situation

What in the key will be there every time the players arrive (or at least until they disrupt it)? What is 'business as usual' for the key?

"The shop sells basic adventuring supplies at a 50% markup."

The Possible Situation

What in the key may or may not be there when the players visit?

"There is a 1-in-6 chance per night of being attacked by 1d8 wolves."

The Reactive Situation

What in the key may happen in the future? Either based on player action or the natural progression of time, what will this key look like upon later visits?

"If the goblins are wiped out, a colony of kobolds move in to take their place."

"If not rescued within a week, the stranded sailors die of dehydration and exposure."

NPC Descriptions

The NPCs within a hex are some of its most unpredictable elements. In theory, each one is a full-fledged person. What information does the hex provide to describe them?

NPCs Present

What NPCs are in the key? How many of them are there? What's their general concept? What do they look like? All 'General Information' questions apply.

"There are three goblins."

NPC Motivation

What does the NPC want? What motivates the the actions they'll take? Both in the short-term (what they want out of their first encounter with the players) and in the long-term (what they want out of life).

"The goblin wants the players to leave."

"The goblin hates the ogre who lives next door."

"The goblin wants power, praise, and wealth."

NPC Abilities/Instincts

How does the NPC pursue their wants? What skills/abilities/powers do they have? What are their go-to strategies and instincts on how they behave? May or may not be mechanical.

"The goblin has +5 to stealth and can backstab an unsuspecting foe for double damage."

"The goblin throws themselves on the ground and begs pitifully for mercy when met with strong foes, blaming everything on the ogre."

"The goblin lies compulsively, and doubles down on the truth of those lies no matter how obvious the lie or costly the facade becomes."

NPC Backstory

Who is the NPC? What was their life like before the players met them? What's their lore? What was their relationship like with their parents? The types of information that won't come out in default play, but that a player might always ask the NPC about on a whim. It's a running joke that one of the cruelest things a player can do to their GM is to ask an NPC "What's your name?"

"The goblin is named Skronk Jr."

"The goblin has a pet rat-dog."

"The goblin used to be a bartender on Main Street until they were fired for embezzlement."

Misc Information

Here are a few more types of information that may come up about a hex in play that didn't fit with any other category. Not all of them are strictly necessary to run a key, but still may impact the way play occurs if included. There's overlap between some of them, but I find it helpful to take a step back and look at a key via each lens separately.

Lore & Backstory

What's the history of this key? What events occurred in the past to bring the key to the state it's in today? What's the explanation for why the key is the way that it is? Like NPC Backstory, encompasses info that's unlikely to be relevant to actual play.

"Here's the genealogy of the king, going back 500 years."

"The polymorph trap was installed by a long-dead wizard who liked to turn their foes into chickens and then dine upon them."

Relations to Other Keys

What other keys do you need to know about to run this key? How does this key combine with other keys to create something larger than the sum of their parts? May be explicit or implicit connections.

"Loud noises alert the ogre next door."

"The key opens the door to the king's chambers."

"The assassin knows the names of the three other conspirators." 

"This goblin liquor is exactly the type of gift that would you get on the Sherriff's good side."

Authorial Intent

Why did the author include this key? What part does it play in the module's design?

"This goblin encounter was included because I felt the dungeon didn't have enough NPCs the players could talk to."

"The kidnapped children were included because I found players didn't have a strong motivation to go into the dungeon without a quest."

"This dungeon is my meditation on the five stages of grief. The goblin represents 'bargaining'."

Kickers & Quests

What should happen next? What in this key helps drive the action of the game forward and keep play from stalling out? What solicits the players to action and fills them with desire to keep playing?

"The innkeeper tells visitors of the quest to slay the dragon."

"The goblin attacks if not presented with the password within 30 seconds."

Potential Player Actions

The core element of roleplaying is the actions the players take. How does the key give the players fuel to come up with cool actions without dictating what those actions should be? This typically isn't something written directly, but it does inform how all the other listed elements get written.

"These unattended barrels are about to be brought into the impenetrable castle that the players want to sneak into."

"The ogre guard is a well-known alcoholic, unable to turn down a drink. In a nearby location there's a keg of double-strength rum--strong enough to knock out even an ogre."

Unanswered Questions

What elements of the key are unstable situations teetering on the edge of two or more possibilities? What powder-kegs exist? What are the Hegelian contradictions inherent in the current status quo? What are the parts of the setting where the players can have a meaningful impact on the world?

"The mercenary has been hired by the cruel king, but their last two payments were skipped. Do they stay loyal or betray their employer for better opportunities?"

"The ailing king believes in order, duty, and justice, but their heir is a hedonistic and irresponsible sociopath. Do they pass their crown along to them, as tradition demands?"

"The cult leader preaches a better world of love and peace but callously throws away their follower’s lives."

Mechanical Details

What stats do the elements in this key have? What are the monster statblocks, trap damages, and various difficulty ratings?

"Disarming the trap has a DC of 15, triggering it on a failure. Those within 20' must make a Dex Save at DC 13 or take 3d6 damage."

"Goblin: HD1 AC2 M7. 1d6 rusty blade."

Exciting Possibilities

What cool or evocative things might happen when the players encounter the hex? In some ways this is just "Conditional Responses", but the emphasis is on getting the GM excited to run the key more than on actual helpful info.

"If the players destroy the hedge, an army of undead awaken and overrun the world."

"There is a 1-in-100 chance that this opens a portal to hell, sucking everyone present through."

Cool Words

What are some exciting ways to describe what's in the room? When the GM runs the key, what are some words that they can read straight from the key to enhance their description? Or simply words to get them excited about running the key? Contains both the much-reviled box-text and the much-beloved purple prose of OSR darlings.

[insert any box-text from a 90's module you can think of here]

"They judder and fall like an old man escaping from a crashed car, but fast, like skipping low-res recordings. It leaps but has forgotten how to stand. The shaking steps collapse."

The Script

How will the scene of the key play out? What actions does the GM need to make sure the players take? This element is, thankfully, out of fashion and generally should not be included in any stage of prep. It is included here only because it is a common element found in many written modules.

"After the players agree to accept the quest, they exit the city via the west gate and have the following exchange with the gate guards: ..."

IRL Props

What solid objects or digital images can you actually give or show your players to help them visualize the key?

Art of the monster that lives in the room.

A fake newspaper handout, which contains clues relevant to the mystery.

An actual fake medal that the players get presented with at the same time it is presented to their character by the king.

Background music to set the tone.

Conclusion

Every one of these elements is something that may need to be invented by somebody at some point in play--either by the author as they write the module, the GM as they prep it before play, or the GM as they improvise it mid-play. The questions are: for a published module, which elements are best explicitly provided within the module's text itself and which should be left to the GM? What are some trade-offs being made when deciding which elements to provide and how to provide them? What are some useful ways of thinking about these elements as you choose which to include?

I'll be wrestling with those questions in my next post!