My favourite RPG books do their work in three distinct stages:
GRAB: Get the reader excited to play the game and make it an easy sell to players.
PREP: Give the GM what they need to get ready to play.
PLAY: Make it easy to play the game once you get it to the table.
In short, they help the person who bought the book to make the game happen.
WHAT FAILURE LOOKS LIKE
I've got plenty of books on my shelf that fall down at one of these stages.
GRAB: Books that just don't get me excited. These don't last long. Sometimes a game has neat parts but is a tough sell to players, often lacking an easy hook to use in the pitch.
PREP: The classic is the book that reads fantastically, but you can't quite see how it actually translates to a session, or the amount of work required to prep feels overwhelming.
PLAY: Books you get to the table, with a group of excited players, but there's either something lacking or, more commonly, the rules themselves get in the way of the fun.
I'm not all that interested in the eternal "what is a game?" debate. I'd rather identify the RPGs that seem most effective at making the game happen, enabling actual play instead of sitting on a bookshelf.
WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE
GRAB: Anything with evocative artwork. I say this as a writer who cannot draw at all. A thousand times I've seen people get excited for a game before they've even read a word. This power shouldn't be underestimated.
Mothership, MÖRK BORG, Ultraviolet Grasslands. Anything that just leaps off the page and demands your attention while laying down a very clear vibe of what to expect from the game. Mothership isn't just an Alien inspired game, but it's useful to have that first hook to draw players in.
PREP: FIST is a great at this. When reading through it the prep just sort of... happens. Of course it has all those random tables, but the advice for how to run the game is so clear that just from skimming it I felt confident I could give it a shot. Cthulhu Dark has a tiny rules section, then goes into detail explaining how to use each of those rules, then how to structure your game, and includes a selection of settings to use.
Out of the three sections I think this is the one that gets overlooked most often. Sometimes it gets offloaded onto supplements assumes you're using an existing adventure module, but I'd always rather see this area covered by the core book right there alongside the rules of play.
PLAY: 24XX hits both halves of this. Firstly the rules are so light that they don't get in the way, but secondly the game gives you a bunch of tables and guidance that can help in those moments of GMing when you need a prompt or a spark. Oh, you thought we handled all that in prep? Prep never complete! Tables to help improvise NPCs and locations are downright essential for the way I run games.
Well, no... but I think these things significantly increase the chance of the game actually being enjoyed at the table.
That's certainly what I look for in a game, whether I'm buying it or designing it myself.
Elsewhere
Patrickdives into one of the most unusual and compelling miniature games that I’ve never heard of.
Filmdeg Miniatures continues to track down the legends of Games Workshop’s history, this time speaking with John Blanche about designing Space Marines.
Over on Patreon I look at perhaps the earliest artifact of my gaming history.
Four years ago, I wrote about my history with miniature games and getting back into them during the lockdown. Summer 1995 saw me seduced by the world of miniatures during show-and-tell, but I needed to endure the long wait till Christmas before I could get a boxed game into my hands.
Save up my pocket money? As a ten year old?? Impossible.
During this extended period of anticipation I poured over every detail of White Dwarf each month, and that very first issue I bought is still burned into my brain.
Expect the full post here and on the blog next week.
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I fully agree about the prep side of the rule book needing to be air tight. As I do more and more solo rpging and the like, having good tools for both prep and improv is becoming more important to me.
Admittedly, with some work you can cobble together your own prep tools from a mirage of different rule books, but that almost reaching the point of making your own rule book at that point.
Though I’ll slightly push back on the importance of art. Having looked at Mork Borg, from an artistic view, the book and its siblings are great. But they somewhat fall down on usability at the end of the day with a too deep of a commitment to the art side of the rule book that hurts usability somewhat as a first time player and reader.
However, I think it's important to remember the differences between various play cultures: there are people for whom studying the manual for a month and taking notes, then mastering the game through long months of iterations of playing, feedback, reflections, and developing a deep understanding of the rules is the main pleasure :)
Practically everyone I know who loves Burning Wheel seems to have this approach.
I fully agree about the prep side of the rule book needing to be air tight. As I do more and more solo rpging and the like, having good tools for both prep and improv is becoming more important to me.
Admittedly, with some work you can cobble together your own prep tools from a mirage of different rule books, but that almost reaching the point of making your own rule book at that point.
Though I’ll slightly push back on the importance of art. Having looked at Mork Borg, from an artistic view, the book and its siblings are great. But they somewhat fall down on usability at the end of the day with a too deep of a commitment to the art side of the rule book that hurts usability somewhat as a first time player and reader.
Great post!
However, I think it's important to remember the differences between various play cultures: there are people for whom studying the manual for a month and taking notes, then mastering the game through long months of iterations of playing, feedback, reflections, and developing a deep understanding of the rules is the main pleasure :)
Practically everyone I know who loves Burning Wheel seems to have this approach.