Cinco: Play Procedures

Procedure? I hardly know her! Harharharharhar. Travel, exploration, combat. That's what we're talking about. Wait, what's this?

DISCLAIMER
The author wrote this article out of her interest in this hobby, and also to synthesize this with her other interests in literary, mathematical, or political theory. Any criticism in this article was written in pursuit of that interest, and it is not intended as ammunition in factional disputes nor as a personal denouncement of the individuals whose works are being criticized. The author also has no interest in petty arguments on any topics discussed in this article.

What the fuck? Anyway. Art by Norn Noszka!!

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The word ‘procedure’ is interesting in that became a sort of buzzword for marketing rulebooks without people necessarily agreeing on what the word meant or referred to. Some held the notion that ‘procedure’ referred to the discursive, non-written structures that which encode how a table interacts within itself and with a game as a formal ruleset, like a social contract of play. Others held a more formal notion, intrinsic to any game’s structure, that procedures are synchronic logic which situate diachronic “rules”, e.g., when versus how you roll dice. It’s like the difference between how your family plays Monopoly and the order of operations of the game Monopoly (roll dice, move token, buy property or pay rent, switch to the next player). I used to implicitly accept the latter view just because it was endorsed in my circles and I felt like it was something I could speak on, especially since I was taking a course on abstract machines at the time. But, you know. I'm a fucking Lacanian! So, with that being said…

For many reasons, there is not a hard line separating one definition from the other in ‘practice’ (play). This is especially true for tabletop role-playing games whose mode of play is conversion. On one hand, there is no structural difference between formal and informal… structures when both exist on the same plane of conversation. On the other hand, formal structures cannot take real form until they are incarnated in play, meaning in conversation. This means that, especially when developing materials for your own home game, it’s really not useful to distinguish between formal and informal procedures. They interface with each other through conversation and, when conversation becomes play, become one and the same. The only exception is when there's an implicit priority of one over another: either because the rulebook is considered the game proper and should be followed when possible (traditional orientation), or because rulings are specific to the situation at hand and should override the rulebook when appropriate (so-called "old-school" orientation)—but we're enlightened, aren't we? We're on that DIY shit.

The most important consideration for me is whether a procedure, formal or informal, overrides opportunities for players to act in the game or speak in the conversation. I've played in a couple games where play procedures are effectively solo games for the game master, so they're off doing their own thing and keeping the players updated but otherwise not really involving them except passively. This was an issue for me when I ran a game using hazard dice in like 2020 because I thought they would add something (turns out it's wrongthink to not super care for them). People usually use the word "railroad" to refer to when a game master enforces specific outcomes to avoid messing up whatever story or events they have planned ahead of time. I think there's an equally annoying thing as a procedural railroad, where so much of the game happens automatically that players don't feel like active participants even if they contribute along the way. I'm sure that works fine if you're someone who thinks of the game as mostly a formal exercise—far from being exclusive of OSR circles! However, I like conversational interactions (between participants, not necessarily or even between PCs and NPCs) being the primary mode of play. It's sort of why Trophy Gold deprogrammed me, haha (A, B, C).

Travel

I treat travel as a sort of loading screen between downtime (the appetizer) and the session or adventure (the main course). Maybe they're like bread sticks? I haven't eaten yet today. Anyway. Originally, I rolled for the weather and the direction of the wind (to modify sailing speed), and then checked what ship they encountered each day. It was, in my opinion, boring. There wasn't much to do for players except that I had them roll for everything. Although I engaged them with encounters, the whole framework around it felt tedious and non-interactive. So, here's what I do now.

I have everyone talk about what their character's job on the ship was (originally asked them individually, but it was easier and more evocative to ask everyone as a group). Then I go around the table, check if an encounter happens (in which case that player takes the lead), and otherwise ask them to make a D20 check for their task, applying their most relevant aspect. The difficulty of the check is modified by the weather, which is a D6 roll that doubles for movement over the ocean. This is much more fun and imaginative, and it's basically a hijink conductor.

There's still a few stumbling blocks. The first is there's still a lot of rolling going on, for weather and checking encounters. I gave myself that responsibility to avoid confusing players about which dice mean what, especially when they eventually roll for themselves, but it means there's a chunk of time for which I'm staring at my GM tray (I usually stand by my dining table, which is very much serving... waitress) and not engaging directly with my friends. And them rolling, besides being confusing like I said, would also not be very fun for them. I could roll a week of weather in advance—because it'd be cute—but the encounter check? Maybe that can just be something on my end, so I'm included in the roll cycle.

The second stumbling block is a natural tension between freeform and formalized play: it takes about a minute, and some recommendations on my part, for players to figure out their characters' roles on the trip. Would they benefit from specific, formalized roles—captain, navigator, quartermaster, I don't even know what else? I guess, maybe, but I don't really want to fuck with overhead that could be restrictive or overwhelming, and I also don't want to compromise the dollhouse vibes that we currently have. I guess I could forgo the daily loop, have like three tasks with specific outcomes, and if I have more than three players allow them to group on ones they want to do good at? Would that be more fun?

Here's the parts that are fun. Encounters are never necessarily hostile, but not for the usual reason (reaction rolls or w/e). The crew decides what flag they'll fly for the trip, and that determines how other ships react to them. When they interact with ships, they communicate with emoji flags. There's a lot of peaches and eggplants, especially with one Captain Drake. That part's a little unfortunate but, in general, I have literally no complaints. It's fun!! Travel by land is more about seeing who you bump into, and I think the encounters tend to have more transparent interests. You simply can't go wrong with character interactions, especially when they're personally or politically charged. It's all good, and if anything I want more practice improvising talks or (much less often) running combat.

Exploration

Exploration, to me, is like a point-and-click game. I think the most important thing is having interesting things to… point and click, which is mostly a matter of session planning and site design and stuff like that. I was really happy with the first adventure site I made, a plantation running on zombies, because it had a lot of interactive elements and desirable goodies, as well as juicy drama behind the scenes. It's a good recipe, but not exactly a science.

I used a basic kind of turn system. Everyone does something, I check if anyone bothers them (usually based on who you might find in individual "rooms"), and then they all go again. People tend to "get it" pretty well, since it's just ultimately what feels fair? There's a skill issue on my part that some players are more overwhelming than others and I end the turn because it feels like a lot has happened but then it's like wait we need so-and-so to do their thing. I think that's a relatively normal problem? And it's with me, not something that can be fixed with rules.

I thought about replacing that turn structure with something more like Trophy or the board game Clank! which I only know about because one of my Minecraft YouTube blorbos recreated his own version. Like, maybe when the dice roll bad, it accumulates progress towards something bad happening (or becoming more likely to happen). However, I don't want to keep track of anything like that, and the turn structure is most helpful for me to make sure everyone gets to do something even when I mess up. Speaking of Trophy, I should probably award inspiration and emphasize that you can use it to "find" treasure. That was really fun to me. But I don't think it's on anyone's mind. Are people too engaged? Damn.

So, yeah. I don't have a lot to say on this per se? For me it's all about content, not structure (procedural or even otherwise). You can see what my prep looks like here!

Combat

I don't really care for combat. Don't fight me about it. However, when it does happen, I like for there to be interesting but not overwhelming choices. I think D&D 5e wavers between mashing the same button or having like ten different buttons to choose from. Neither of those orientations feel great.

Each participant gets 2 actions per turn, in short:

• Move
• Use an item (each can be used once; any brave dual-wielders?)
• Give yourself or an ally advantage on an action
• Impose disadvantage on an opponent's action
  

Those last two are ones that I find the most interesting. The thing is I haven't told my friends that they're options because I tend to keep all the rules in my heads for them, and I think it's easy to forget you can do things that aren't just moving or attacking. So, I'll just impress that upon them the next time we have an encounter. You can hopefully still see what I'm going for: if you act tactically as a group, you can create sources of advantage for yourselves and sources of disadvantage for your opponents (especially to overcome sources that are intrinsic to the opponent, environment, or circumstances of the encounter). Do you want to protect a friend from a dangerous enemy? Trip someone over? Stuff like that.

This was not inspired by Sword Art Online. Nope.

I use individual initiative on a D6 rolled each round, except that opponents have constant values (2–6). I keep wavering on whether actions are called before or after rolling initiative: before is more interesting because you have the chance to mess it up, but after is easier to handle on the fly. You can tell how often combat happens and how much I care about it, huh? What's good is that it's all pretty intuitive, and no one feels overwhelmed. Lots of creative stuff, too—just more on an individual level than the whole tactical dis/advantage thing. Which is on me!

Conclusion

I think all this is pretty telling of my own preferences in play. It's not necessarily (entirely?) loosey goosey, I just really like to center interactions. I always say that D&D (in the broad sense) is mostly a social activity for me, whether I'm playing or running. Although it's nice to have parts that aren't strictly social, since they contextualize the social gathering itself and give you something to do together, I like things that still require chitchatting between me as the Game Mother (™) and the others (or amongst themselves). Hope this comes in handy or is at least interesting! Thank all y'all for expressing your interest in this and encouraging me to continue :)