@rdonoghue@dice.camp
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rdonoghue

@rdonoghue@dice.camp

So, I only noticed this bio field existed because someone remarked on its absence, which is a little embarrassing. Anyway, I'm a nerd of many colors - Agile Nerd. Productivity Nerd. RPG Nerd. Bag Nerd. Etc. - an old man, and a dad. Used to be a politics nerd, but there's not much joy in that these days.

Have written some RPG stuff, and I used to blog, but the pandemic killed my soul and it hasn't really grown back.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

rdonoghue, to random
@rdonoghue@dice.camp avatar

Y’know, maybe i’m thinking backwards about blogging. Often, I write a thread and it removes my impetus to blog, because the idea is already ‘out there’.

But finding historical threads, in ANY platform, is an absolute shitshow. Maybe I should ignore my “nobody wants to hear this shit twice” instinct and think about lift and shifting threads into blog posts, if only so I can FIND them later.

Huh.

rdonoghue, to random
@rdonoghue@dice.camp avatar

One of the local candidates’ slogans is “We need [dude] fighting for us”.

I am not sure who ‘us’ is, nor who we’re fighting against, and I’m hesitant to find out the answer because the odds seem tilted against that ending well.

rdonoghue, to random
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The fact that a ttrpg system is not open won’t keep me from hacking it, but there’s a good chance it will keep me from being excited about hacking it.

LeviKornelsen, to random
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You know what I love?

Branches of ancient technology that dead-ended somewhere, but could have carried on in the right conditions.

In my head, that's deeply engaging fantasy material for doing "Things are weird and different here".

So if you know of sources for that stuff: Grabby hands

rdonoghue,
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@LeviKornelsen 1491 was a treasure trove of stuff like that for me. Rope boats! Awesome metallurgy!

rdonoghue, to random
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Conversation earlier today has me thinking a bit about the distinction between open and open source in RPGs (setting aside the topic of not-really-open RPGs).

There are plenty of open systems (that is, systems you can legitimately take and do whatever the heck you want with them) but a much smaller set of open source systems ( @malin keeps a nice list of them here - https://ttrpgs.com/post/foss_list - if you’re curious.)

It's a curious distinction.

rdonoghue,
@rdonoghue@dice.camp avatar

To unpack it a little bit, I am comfortable describing, say, Fate as an open system. It's available under Creative Commons (and OGL, though that's an aside) and you can pretty much use it as you see fit.

It is not, however, open source. Specifically, because it does not have a a single source which could potentially be contributed to. maintained and referenced.

And to get ahead of it, I don't think this is good or bad. But I do think it's interesting.

rdonoghue,
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Now, before anything else, it's important to note that open source software has been a big influence on the philosophy behind opening up many other things, including RPGs. Software has wrestled with how to mange openness for decades, and without the lessons learned from that, we'd be in a much worse place than we are.

So, mad props to the giants whose shoulders we stand on.

rdonoghue,
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So, with that in mind, I find myself turning over the question of whether something like Fate should be open source.

To imagine what that would look like, imaging that the Fate SRD - https://fate-srd.com - was kept someplace where anyone who was interested could write up a magic system or correct some typos or rewrite a section for clarity, and then submit that improvement, where it might then be incorporated into the “official" version.

rdonoghue,
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The most obvious advantage of a model like this is that many brains are smarter than few. it could potentially leverage the creativity of an audience of any size to constantly improve the underlying product.

That's the theory at least. In practice, it gets a little bit messier. A lot of open source work is less about the marketplace of ideas and more about exploiting the free labor of the passionate.

(Of course, it's not like that's uncommon in RPG-land)

rdonoghue,
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Now, it's worth noting that this model works very well for software for two reasons:

  1. There is a really solid infrastructure to support this kind fo contribution model, and the skills required for using it overlap with programming skills well enough to keep it from being an extra burden.

  2. Software is testable in a way that something like an RPG is not. That is, if a contribution breaks the code, you don't really need to hem and haw much over its suitability.

rdonoghue,
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I feel like those two points become burdens when applied to RPGs.

  1. There is nothing in RPG design which really relies on you learning how to use github, or one of the other tools that form a de facto standard for this kind of practice. I love github, but adding that requirement definitely increases burden and restricts participation.
rdonoghue,
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  1. In the absence of testability, RPGs are potentially infinitely additive. That is, with any given ruleset, you can always just write more. Bloat is a problem for RPGs under traditional models, and it seems it would be a real danger to any contribution model.

And, yes, there are ways to say 'no' to contributions, but without even the vestiges of testable criteria, it's pretty clear what an emotional minefield that would become.

rdonoghue,
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To be clear: While I raise those points as objections, I don't think they're insurmountable. One absolutely could run a project and find ways to mitigate both with work or cleverness.

They are not arguments against open sourcing an RPG so much as reasons why open sourcing is not automatically the right call for an RPG.

Those are also a little negative, so I want to pivot to a positive side as well.

rdonoghue,
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One of the things that got me thinking about this was realizing that when I thought about what it would require for Fate to be open in this sense, I realized that it would require a canonical version.

And upon realizing that, in the words of Murderbot, I had a Feeling.

rdonoghue,
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I had such an instinctive discomfort with the idea that I had to stop and examine it.

I love the idea of collaboration. Of contribution from community. So what was I responding to? Was it some unacknowledged sense of ownership?

Spoiler: it's not that, but some of it is, I think, tied to my regrettable age.

rdonoghue,
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Perhaps it is a function of coming through an age of scarcity, but the pattern I expect from open content is that you grab it and make your own, and that the thing you make is something different, which you will hopefully also contribute to the chain.

I want an explosion. I want people to steal what they like, toss what they don’t, and cobble together new wonders. Because that's what I want to do.

rdonoghue,
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@MrF It reminds me that one of the arguments put forward when the OGL was rolled out (and for all it's faults with age, that was a HUGE deal at the time) it was that a rising tide lifts all boats.

Part of that was cynicism: any growth of the hobby benefitted D&D, so that was good for them. But it also spoke to the truth that this remains a small enough hobby that we aren't really meaningfully competing with each other, so much as all competing against obscurity.

LeviKornelsen, to random
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    rdonoghue,
    @rdonoghue@dice.camp avatar

    @LeviKornelsen environmental change, whether fast (volcanoes!) or slow (Indus River Valley).

    Cascading consequences from changes elsewhere (such as a different route from A to B resulting someplace prominent abruptly moving off the beaten path, or vice versa.)

    LeviKornelsen, to random
    @LeviKornelsen@dice.camp avatar

    Some of you have likely never experienced the purest, truest forms of "RPG as physics engine", like people actually shooting various things to see if the weapon penetration tables are good.

    If you want to bake your noodle, go get the BIG version of GURPS Gulliver for 3rd edition, and enter the world of "Throwing distance modifiers by arm length? Fucking WHAT?"

    ...

    https://www.gamesdiner.com/gurps/GULLIVER/indexframe.html

    rdonoghue,
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    @LeviKornelsen my go to example of this is Phoenix Command, which was based off a preposterous amount of t of research, including large amounts of shooting things and measuring results. It’s terrible, but magnificent.

    rdonoghue, to random
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    Goonies are currently never saying die.

    rdonoghue,
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    Sloth has a boarding axe, so monsters have not been much of a problem

    rdonoghue,
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    The players described it as "More fun than it had any right to be", which seems about right. It's co-op vs a GM, and as GM, I got rolled over pretty hard. Some of that was that it was a new game, some of it was that my card pull was weird, some of it is that the first adventure is a bit gentle, but mostly the dice were just spending the whole time laughing at me.

    rdonoghue,
    @rdonoghue@dice.camp avatar

    Kind of an interesting product - the components are all high quality, but it's also clear that some corners got cut to keep the game at a Target level price point. Which is fine, but it's one of those games with lots of tokens moving around a lot, and would really benefit from some trays.

    It also more or less drips its love of the source material, which is never a bad thing.

    rdonoghue,
    @rdonoghue@dice.camp avatar

    @davethegame god forbid we could have nice things.

    LeviKornelsen, to random
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    rdonoghue,
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    @LeviKornelsen @miriamrobern @linnaeus @Da_Gut not sure you can usefully define city-ness without a healthy slab of the mercantile, even if it’s through different lenses. The necessity of surplus is so large that it kind of needs to be spoken to.

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