I had an eye-opening experience at Dreamation while running a playtest for Becoming.

Let me back up a little bit and tell you what I don’t like about Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard.

I managed to luck into a playtest with Luke Crane; he and his friends were playtesting a REDACTED game using a modified Mouse Guard. Now, I own Mouse Guard and loved the hell out of reading it, but I’d never played it before. Playing a version of it was eye-opening experience number one.

I think that most of the moment-to-moment gameplay in MG is fine. I like the basic mechanics, I like the helping mechanics, I loved character generation. I’m not a fan of the conflict resolution mechanics.

Some of you may not be aware of how conflicts in Luke’s systems work. The idea is that each side scripts out a set of actions from a predetermined list. Some of these actions are more effective against others in a sort of rock-paper-scissors dynamic (though not that simple). Once you’ve shown your action and rolled the dice, you describe what happens.

Here’s the thing I don’t like: mechanics and story have virtually nothing to do with each other. Nothing you describe in the narrative has any impact on the mechanics of the conflict, and nothing in the mechanics encourages you to describe the action in any particular way. It’s a cool system, but it doesn’t really encourage roleplaying.

Now, back to eye-opening experience number two. In one of my playtests at Dreamation it was pointed out to me that Becoming suffered from the exact same problem. What I had created was an interesting, complex, and tactical table-top bargaining game. It had a lot of depth and people came away having a lot of fun, but they weren’t having fun for the reasons I wanted them to have fun. They often forgot to explain what was happening in narrative terms. The narrative was, in many cases, an afterthought; much more attention was given to the metagame. This would be fine if what I had set out to create was a complex and tactical table-top bargaining game, but what I had set out to create was a role-playing game. I had not done so.

It’s sometimes hard to hear feedback like that, but this is why we playtest. I was lucky enough to have a number of playtesters who were both honest and constructive in their feedback so, rather than curling into a fetal position and crying myself to sleep, I got ideas. I started thinking about it. I started trying to find a way to encourage the behavior that I wanted to see at the table because, as we all know, if your game doesn’t mechanically support a thing, it is not about that thing.

It was difficult but absolutely necessary. I’ve since redesigned the game, hopefully in a way that encourages role-playing and narrative much more. Playtesting will tell the tale, and I’m excited to see it happen.

Who are you and what do you do in the industry?

My name is Kirin Robinson, I’m an avid roleplaying gamer closing in on two decades now of active gaming, and only just now starting to get into game design. I sort of have one foot in the old-school Dungeons & Dragons Revival movement (though I’m not an Edition Warrior – at least I try not to be) and one foot in the indie storygame-ish movement (I often posit that there’s a lot of crossover but I don’t want to offend either) and I basically wrote a love-letter game to early edition D&D called Old School Hack that won an ENnie last year that’s drawn some attention to itself for being presented well. Check it out if you haven’t, it’s short – like 25 pages short – and free: http://www.oldschoolhack.net
My day job is doing motion graphics and animation for movie trailers.

What the heck is Old School Hack? Where did Old School Hack come from?

Old School Hack is a reimagining of 1981 Basic D&D but using some modern gaming concepts. I’ve often referred to it as a sort of “cocktail napkin” D&D because it’s really designed for immediate print-out-and-play and tailored to a sort of off-the-cuff DMing and bring-in-your-crazy-action-ideas for playing. In doing so, it’s a slightly different beast from traditional D&D and that’s probably a good thing. As it stands the game only exists as a sort of beginner-level fantasy game that encompasses only the first four levels of play, but the reward mechanisms within the game often push for a certain zany cinematic madcapness so a lot of people only really play it as a one-shot or for a few sessions.

Obviously there’s no shortage of D&D wannabes or D&D-but-how-someone-thinks-it-should-be-fixed fantasy roleplaying games out there, and I’m quite happy with the idea of Old School Hack being just another among many. I tried to avoid “fix-it” motivated design because I’m actually a devoted lover of straight-up regular D&D, I’ve tried and enjoyed all the editions, and I’m not looking to replace a game that I don’t think is broken.

Old School Hack came out originally from an exploration of the DIY simplicity trend we’ve been seeing in the indie sphere a couple of years now, something I was exploring from becoming a new father and suddenly having limited gaming time due to kid-wrangling and bedtimes and such. I like a gaming session to have a fun and satisfying emotional arc and the complexity of Pathfinder or 4th edition D&D or some of the other mainstream-ish games just didn’t quite achieve that when you’ve only got two or two-and-a-half hours of play, so I was remembering how much faster-paced some of the older editions of D&D could be, and was getting really excited about “bite right into the action” type games like John Harper’s Lady Blackbird (http://www.onesevendesign.com/ladyblackbird/) or Danger Patrol (http://www.dangerpatrol.com/) so I was trying to figure out a way to play D&D, but faster and still fresh. That’s when I found Eric Provost’s Red Box Hack (http://redboxhack.blogspot.com/) which was HIS take on 1981 Basic D&D but transplanted into this wonderfully goofy world of wuxia and animal characters (think Kung Fu Panda-ish) and ran a very successful short campaign using it. He encouraged people to take his (unfinished-ish?) system and hack it and make their own and I wanted to see it dragged back into the world of D&D and that’s what I ended up doing with it.

Up until then my only real exploration of game design was doing homebrew riffs off of existing systems and making campaign documents and (a couple of popular) character sheets and play-aids for D&D and other games. My design process really ended up in the same world, where the rules weren’t some sort of document or book you had to flip through but more a whole series of handouts that you could print as many as you want of and players could easily reference. I don’t want to say this was revolutionary or anything but the game design really did end up being this crazy presentational experiment where the entire system had to look like a visual reference document. I ended up having a lot of fun with that and that seems to be what people have really been interested in as well. I’m hopeful that I’ve broadened the conversation about RPG presentation a bit.

What are your future game design plans?

Well, I’m finally getting around to finalizing the game (it currently only exists in Beta, which is completely playable but also doesn’t have the DMing tools I’d like it to have), and I’m interested in really addressing the whole lack-of-campaign-play issue full-on with the intention of broadening the game to another four levels of play. I hope to release the final Basic Game this year and have most of the next tier (I’ve been calling it the Heroic Game) done and starting to be laid out.

Again a lot of my thoughts have been geared towards design and presentation, and thinking very hard about the more tactile components of how the game is read, shared, and used and played on the table. The Beta had a whole bunch of cool optional construction bits – Action Cards, a Hex turn tracker, Game tokens, etc. – When non-roleplayers look at it, they often think it’s some sort of boardgame. Believe it or not I don’t really consider myself much of a rules innovator, the elegance of the game’s rules are largely grandfathered in from Red Box Hack or stolen from other cool games (there’s a bit of Prime Time Adventures in there, some In a Wicked Age, some 4th Edition D&Disms, etc) and I’ve been absolutely incredibly lucky to have some really smart and clever Playtesters and Old School Hack enthusiasts that have taken the game and looked at it from every angle and offered some very creative thoughts.

This is one of the reasons why I think we’re in sort of a Golden Age of roleplaying right now – between the OGL environment that’s existed for over a decade now and the massive crossover we’re seeing between mainstream and indie gaming, the design discussions have really leapt forward in quality and while there’s (of course) sometimes quite a lot of playstyle conflict and arguing on the internet, there’s quite a lot of questioning and challenging going on which I feel like we’re all reaping the benefit of.

What’s your favorite game (that you didn’t write) and why?

Oh man I am the most wishy-washy and distractible gamer ever, I’m constantly finding new shiny gaming things and my favorites don’t stay favorite for long!

Dungeons & Dragons is probably my one true love, I always come back to it (though sometimes in different forms). I love the epic sense of advancement, the kitchen-sink melting pot of all this mythology and literature, and most of all I love the excitement and suspence of a good dungeoncrawl.

Recent “cool, shiny things” I’ve gotten excited about and played, beyond the inspirations mentioned above, are your own Bulldogs! RPG, which is the first time I’ve seen FATE presented in a way that I really grokked right off the bat, as well as pretty much hitting the flavor of blasters-and-ship-malfunctions science fiction that I like the most; the Leverage RPG which finally presents the “competence infiltration” awesomeness I’ve been looking for in a contemporary-set roleplaying game; and Mouse Guard, which puts the intense-character-driven storygaming in a much friendlier and heroic light by being about teeny tiny badass mouse heroes.

Thanks again for taking the time to ask me about Old School Hack, and gaming in general. I’m a deeply-devoted gaming positivist, I really think tabletop gaming is one of the healthiest recreational endeavors out there and often brings out the best in people – I’m always excited to hear about more games and people taking gaming in new directions.

Who are you and what do you do in the industry?

My name is Kirin Robinson, I’m an avid roleplaying gamer closing in on two decades now of active gaming, and only just now starting to get into game design. I sort of have one foot in the old-school Dungeons & Dragons Revival movement (though I’m not an Edition Warrior – at least I try not to be) and one foot in the indie storygame-ish movement (I often posit that there’s a lot of crossover but I don’t want to offend either) and I basically wrote a love-letter game to early edition D&D called Old School Hack that won an ENnie last year that’s drawn some attention to itself for being presented well. Check it out if you haven’t, it’s short – like 25 pages short – and free: http://www.oldschoolhack.net
My day job is doing motion graphics and animation for movie trailers.

What the heck is Old School Hack? Where did Old School Hack come from?

Old School Hack is a reimagining of 1981 Basic D&D but using some modern gaming concepts. I’ve often referred to it as a sort of “cocktail napkin” D&D because it’s really designed for immediate print-out-and-play and tailored to a sort of off-the-cuff DMing and bring-in-your-crazy-action-ideas for playing. In doing so, it’s a slightly different beast from traditional D&D and that’s probably a good thing. As it stands the game only exists as a sort of beginner-level fantasy game that encompasses only the first four levels of play, but the reward mechanisms within the game often push for a certain zany cinematic madcapness so a lot of people only really play it as a one-shot or for a few sessions.

Obviously there’s no shortage of D&D wannabes or D&D-but-how-someone-thinks-it-should-be-fixed fantasy roleplaying games out there, and I’m quite happy with the idea of Old School Hack being just another among many. I tried to avoid “fix-it” motivated design because I’m actually a devoted lover of straight-up regular D&D, I’ve tried and enjoyed all the editions, and I’m not looking to replace a game that I don’t think is broken.

Old School Hack came out originally from an exploration of the DIY simplicity trend we’ve been seeing in the indie sphere a couple of years now, something I was exploring from becoming a new father and suddenly having limited gaming time due to kid-wrangling and bedtimes and such. I like a gaming session to have a fun and satisfying emotional arc and the complexity of Pathfinder or 4th edition D&D or some of the other mainstream-ish games just didn’t quite achieve that when you’ve only got two or two-and-a-half hours of play, so I was remembering how much faster-paced some of the older editions of D&D could be, and was getting really excited about “bite right into the action” type games like John Harper’s Lady Blackbird (http://www.onesevendesign.com/ladyblackbird/) or Danger Patrol (http://www.dangerpatrol.com/) so I was trying to figure out a way to play D&D, but faster and still fresh. That’s when I found Eric Provost’s Red Box Hack (http://redboxhack.blogspot.com/) which was HIS take on 1981 Basic D&D but transplanted into this wonderfully goofy world of wuxia and animal characters (think Kung Fu Panda-ish) and ran a very successful short campaign using it. He encouraged people to take his (unfinished-ish?) system and hack it and make their own and I wanted to see it dragged back into the world of D&D and that’s what I ended up doing with it.

Up until then my only real exploration of game design was doing homebrew riffs off of existing systems and making campaign documents and (a couple of popular) character sheets and play-aids for D&D and other games. My design process really ended up in the same world, where the rules weren’t some sort of document or book you had to flip through but more a whole series of handouts that you could print as many as you want of and players could easily reference. I don’t want to say this was revolutionary or anything but the game design really did end up being this crazy presentational experiment where the entire system had to look like a visual reference document. I ended up having a lot of fun with that and that seems to be what people have really been interested in as well. I’m hopeful that I’ve broadened the conversation about RPG presentation a bit.

What are your future game design plans?

Well, I’m finally getting around to finalizing the game (it currently only exists in Beta, which is completely playable but also doesn’t have the DMing tools I’d like it to have), and I’m interested in really addressing the whole lack-of-campaign-play issue full-on with the intention of broadening the game to another four levels of play. I hope to release the final Basic Game this year and have most of the next tier (I’ve been calling it the Heroic Game) done and starting to be laid out.

Again a lot of my thoughts have been geared towards design and presentation, and thinking very hard about the more tactile components of how the game is read, shared, and used and played on the table. The Beta had a whole bunch of cool optional construction bits – Action Cards, a Hex turn tracker, Game tokens, etc. – When non-roleplayers look at it, they often think it’s some sort of boardgame. Believe it or not I don’t really consider myself much of a rules innovator, the elegance of the game’s rules are largely grandfathered in from Red Box Hack or stolen from other cool games (there’s a bit of Prime Time Adventures in there, some In a Wicked Age, some 4th Edition D&Disms, etc) and I’ve been absolutely incredibly lucky to have some really smart and clever Playtesters and Old School Hack enthusiasts that have taken the game and looked at it from every angle and offered some very creative thoughts.

This is one of the reasons why I think we’re in sort of a Golden Age of roleplaying right now – between the OGL environment that’s existed for over a decade now and the massive crossover we’re seeing between mainstream and indie gaming, the design discussions have really leapt forward in quality and while there’s (of course) sometimes quite a lot of playstyle conflict and arguing on the internet, there’s quite a lot of questioning and challenging going on which I feel like we’re all reaping the benefit of.

What’s your favorite game (that you didn’t write) and why?

Oh man I am the most wishy-washy and distractible gamer ever, I’m constantly finding new shiny gaming things and my favorites don’t stay favorite for long!

Dungeons & Dragons is probably my one true love, I always come back to it (though sometimes in different forms). I love the epic sense of advancement, the kitchen-sink melting pot of all this mythology and literature, and most of all I love the excitement and suspence of a good dungeoncrawl.

Recent “cool, shiny things” I’ve gotten excited about and played, beyond the inspirations mentioned above, are your own Bulldogs! RPG, which is the first time I’ve seen FATE presented in a way that I really grokked right off the bat, as well as pretty much hitting the flavor of blasters-and-ship-malfunctions science fiction that I like the most; the Leverage RPG which finally presents the “competence infiltration” awesomeness I’ve been looking for in a contemporary-set roleplaying game; and Mouse Guard, which puts the intense-character-driven storygaming in a much friendlier and heroic light by being about teeny tiny badass mouse heroes.

Thanks again for taking the time to ask me about Old School Hack, and gaming in general. I’m a deeply-devoted gaming positivist, I really think tabletop gaming is one of the healthiest recreational endeavors out there and often brings out the best in people – I’m always excited to hear about more games and people taking gaming in new directions.

If you’ve been following my blogging and tweeting (and if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you have) then you may have come to the conclusion that I’m not a big fan of D&D. I’ve been very critical of the game lately, especially since the announcement of the next edtion of the game.

Here’s the thing: I criticize because I care.

D&D is responsible for a huge number of fond childhood memories for me, and quite a few more recent memories, too. For me, D&D is the total collection of all of these memories, a sort of hodge-podge mosaic of gaming. I remember dropping magically created walls on my enemies from the back of a dragon, spelunking my way through Undermountain and Dragon Mountain and Mountain Whose Name I Cannot Remember. I remember becoming the DM, the instant where the roles were reversed and a whole new world of gaming openend up for me. I remember poor Japhed, the NPC rogue who died at the fangs of a summoned snake, and I remember the kobold sorcerer who almost caused a TPK (don’t laugh; he was a badass kobold and probably had some serious anger management issues due to a massive inferiority complex).

For all these good memories there are plenty of bad ones, but these are mostly generic frustration with the rules and other assorted bullshit. I have to look this spell up again? I have to recalculate my hit points? This combat has taken TWO FREAKING HOURS and is only HALFWAY DONE?! Yeah, not all good times.

But for all that, D&D holds a special place in my mind, memories, and heart. It’s the game that put me on the path I walk now. It’s the vehicle through which I interact with many of my friends to this day. It’s a common language, a common ground, a form of shorthand for when I’m explaining my hobby to outsiders (you know, those people who look at you funny when you tell them you play role-playing games).

For all the frustrations I have (and have recently expresssed) with D&D, I owe it quite a bit. This is partially why I’m expressing my concerns and frustrations so vocally; I want it to be the very best game it can be. I want it to be able to provide me with more of those great memories. But I owe it many things, not the least of which is the benefit of the doubt.

When it has no mechanical weight.

Alignment can be a touchy issue for gamers. Some people insist that it’s a great way to inform roleplaying, a starting point for your character. Others think it’s an unrealistic straight jacket, that nobody’s always good all of the time or wholly and irredeemably evil. It could be either of these things but most of the time it seems like an afterthought, a vestigial rule that lacks meaning for modern gamers.

Why does it lack meaning? Are the concepts of good and evil no longer relevant in a society of moral grays? Is it unrealistic to think that a character can be a shining beacon of his or her beliefs, an example to others? I kind of doubt that this is the case; I think these ideas are just as relevant now as they always were, and may actually be appealing to many because of their simplicity, their black and white nature. The problem, I think, is with implementation.

Let’s look at the current incarnation of D&D as an example. Alignment exists but it has very little effect on the game. Yes, your cleric has to be of an alignment compatible with his or her god, but what does being Good or Lawful Good or whatever actually mean? It can inform roleplay in the right hands but there’s no incentive to let it do so. I think a lot of people probably forget that it’s even on their character sheet; I certainly had to remind the paladin in my group that he’d find torture repugnant on more than one occasion.

Past editions gave it some weight: your alignment could be detected, certain weapons would respond well (or not so well) to certain alignments, and violating your alignment came with some sort of penalty. But even this isn’t a great way to incentivize alignment. It’s like working at a job you don’t care about: the threat of being fired will keep you working just well enough to not get fired, but you’re unlikely to do anything beyond that.

The solution (my solution at least) is incentive. Reward. I talk about incentives an awful lot for a reason: mechanical incentives are how you encourage the behavior you want in your games. If you want the Lawful Good paladin to uphold the law and oppose evil, you need to provide an incentive to do so that’s more attractive than the alternative. This could be as simple as providing bonuses to skill checks, attack rolls, damage, and so forth whenever the spirit of the alignment is being actively pursued. It could involve bonus XP. It could involve earning some sort of points or tokens that can be cashed in for benefits later. The exact incentive doesn’t really matter.

The important thing is that, if alignment is an important part of your game and the characters within your game, there needs to be a reason to pay attention to it. Punishment will help but will only get you so far; players will work a lot harder for rewards, things that make them better.

Alignment without mechanical weight, without incentive, fails to fulfil its purpose in the game. It might as well not even be there.