Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #deltagreen
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Reading comments on #DeltaGreen today really cemented a thought that’s been floating around in my head: people don’t buy #TTRPGs for rules, they buy them for rules AND a compelling world. And it’s ok if the rules are merely sufficient, but the world? Not so much.
The job of a #TTRPG book is to HAND OFF the world to the GM. To christen them God and tell them “do what thou will with this,” but to jump that hurdle you must ENTERTAIN AND HOOK THE GM.
This sounds obvious, but apparently (based on some comments) a lot of people don’t get it.
This sounds obvious, but apparently (based on some comments) a lot of people don’t get it.
“Why do you have a giant timeline in the Handler’s guide?” A GM coming in blank to a game is a God-in-training. They need to get the flavour (to change the flavour but they have to know what it IS first). The background. The characters. The factions. The history it is not fluff.
I've been thinking a bit about #deltagreen and I've come to the conclusion that it's too optimistic. Specifically, I don't think it fully comes to grips with The Problem of Evil. And that's maybe a fault that goes back to Lovecraft, but I think the RPG format makes it worse 1/n
So let's think about the basic set up: #Cthulhu is real. Governments do what governments do. Life continues, until it doesn't.
But. Nuclear and biological weapons. Global warming. Genocide. The use of religion to justify vast destruction of human lives, violent and otherwise.
But. Nuclear and biological weapons. Global warming. Genocide. The use of religion to justify vast destruction of human lives, violent and otherwise.
What's fucked in the world is fucked in ways which are really hard to capture neatly in the #Cthulhu framework; he's a pre-nuclear character, for the most part, and the human race hadn't shown its true colors yet, in The Bad Places of the Mid 20th Century. We can do much worse.
99.9% of my interactions with fans are delightful. #DeltaGreen fans, in particular, are a great bunch. They want to talk, they want to explore ideas within the paradigm, and most of all, they want to be frightened. So, new publisher, how to deal with the OTHER .1%?
Clear lines of communication make some people feel that they can say ANYTHING to you. I've had more than a few "WELL ASSHOLE!" emails and DMs. Usually, this is for something exceedingly stupid — like shipping a book to Australia with real, live, postal rates.
Other times, it's some political tangle and the language and insults are invariably worse. My policy is the same for both. 1) Did you order something <nameless numberhead guy>? 2) Here's your money back. 3) You're fired, don't come back.
