Thread by @Epidiah

It's been a week since the impromptu Tunnels & Trolls game that inspired this thread and I'm still thinking about it.

https://twitter.com/Epidiah/status/1100404272146120705

I've been hacking a space fantasy version of the game, because I saw an opportunity to do the WWII dogfight and bomber run inspired space battles that are all over Star Warss, but also because I wanted to clarify my thoughts on how I run the game.

This is a huge chunk of my game design process: hacking games I enjoy to find ways to explain how I enjoy them. This is usually just grist for the mill, but sometimes you can see come through more clearly in my published designs.

Like I spoke last month about how Vast & Starlit is just me hacking Read a Sitch from Apocalypse World.

#LincolnGreen is largely a product of me hacking both Tunnels & Trolls and Sanguine's Usagi Yojimbo game.

What often happens with these hacks is I let my designs wander as far from the original game as they can get. They keep the core lessons of the original design, but try to find other ways to express that. Sometimes I make them jump through hoops, like "no dice, just coins."

But this space fantasy hack is not going that route. Partly because my creative constraint is "how far can you wander and still seamlessly throw T&T characters into the mix."

But also partly because of the very design of T&T invites you to hack it.

There's the part where the rulebook explicitly tells you to make the game your own. But a lot of games do that.

There's the part where the rules offer two competing ways to handle something and let you decide which you want to use. That may be rarer these days, but it's not entirely uncommon.

For me, it's the part where playing the game at the table necessitates hacking the rules on the fly. It's part of the game structure.

There's no hard and fast rule? Then we need to make one up that handles this specific situation.

You don't like the odds? Time to start negotiating with the GM over what can be done to make them better.

That other thread has some examples of these. What I dig most about this is that you can boil most of the game down to a handful of rules & then expand out from there in play, attaching temporary rule structures to shifting situations.

& you don't need to hold onto them.

"The room is on fire! Make a Constitution saving roll to keep your wits as smoke & flame steal the breathable air."

"The room is on fire! Lose 1d6 Strength as the heat & smoke saps your might!"

"The room is on fire! Make a Luck saving roll to see if you're near the door!"

Each of these, and many more, could be handed out at any time the room is on fire. But what's even more interesting, is that each of them could be handed out to different characters in the exact same room dealing with the same fire. And their players could be advocating for this!

GM: "The room is on fire!"

Player: "My barbarian steels her thews & braces her shoulders against a cross beam to keep the room from collapsing!"

GM: "So brave! Lose 1d6 Strength as the heat & smoke saps your might!"

Other Player: "That's right! The roof could collapse! My tiny little luck monster is hoping they're right next to the door so they can get out before that happens!"

GM: "So brave! Make a Luck saving roll to see if you're near the door!"

This is an infectious part of the game: To design is to play and to play is to design.

I'm fundamentally unable to resist taking it further.

I was thinking earlier today about my space fantasy version, thinking about equipment lists & interstellar credits & how universal space capitalism is nonsense. How to handle this?

Here's my current idea, which relies a bit another brilliant bit of T&T, the attribute Luck.

Acquiring things is handled through saving rolls that are massaged by the exchange of valuable goods. The exact saving roll or rolls depends on the fictional situation, though it often comes down to Luck.

I'm seeing it going down a bit like this…

Player: "Hey, we want to find a nice place to eat on this forsaken planet! One that won't bust our budget, at that."

GM: "Give me a level 3 Luck saving roll, it's a bit backwater here."

Player, rolling a 5, which isn't enough: "Doesn't look good, but these 15 AP are delicious."

GM: "Okay, there's a Glorbian joint, which isn't nice, but will get the job done. & there's a high-end interstellar fusion pub that'll happily take some of those relics you found off your hands…"

Player: "Not Glorbian again. Can I talk the pub owner into some arrangement?"

GM: "You're a stranger here, but she might have work for you. Give me a level 2 Charisma saving roll."

And we're off!

And by "we're off" I of course mean the GM has backed themself unto one of those vertiginous cliffs where, if that saving roll goes well for the player, we'll be on the edge of a dizzyingly unprepped adventure.

Lately, I've been thinking about how I personally approach these rolls. I've thought about this a lot in the past, & a huge chunk of my thoughts inspired how saving throws work in #LincolnGreen. But that design diverged from this in subtle ways. Thinking specifically about T&T...

...and thinking about a door you might happen upon while wandering tunnels full of trolls. It's a locked door, and like any good delver, you know that a locked door is just an invitation. (We'll get into what that means about you & your boundaries another time.)

Right now, you want on the other side of that door. As the GM, can offer you a Dexterity saving roll to pick the lock or a Strength saving roll to force it open. As a wizard, you might just cast Knock-Knock or as a fairy you might find another way to slip through.

If this is just a locked door to us, then it's just a matter of choosing the path of least resistance that uses the least resources to get us through. Or, if we're AP conscious, we can look for the path of most resistance to get as much practice as we can.

And that's fine.

But if I, as the GM, build those saving rolls based on what's behind the door (or what could be behind the door if I'm flying by the seat of my pants), I could go another route...

GM "You can hear the clanking of large, trollish dishes & the murmurs of a couple trolls complaining about the weather: 'It's too damn sunny out again.' 'Mm hmm, not a cloud in the sky. Supposed to let up & rain some this weekend, but who knows?'"

GM: "A level 2 Dex saving roll will let you unlock the door without being heard. A level 2 Str saving roll will let you bust through the door and surprise some trolls who sound like they're having tea. What else you got?"

Now, no matter what the players choose, success or failure on the saving roll, something's going to happen. It's no longer about opening the door. It's about the way that door opens and how that affects what's happening next.

You don't always have to frame saving rolls like this. In fact, I find it a bit relentless. If every single roll has a big impact on the fiction, it gets a little monotonous.

I enjoy rolling to smell the flowers from time to time. (See also Wolfspell & Swords Without Master)

But consider this great question @ActionEconomy asked earlier in the thread:

https://twitter.com/ActionEconomy/status/1102548091880669185

To get AP from a saving roll, it should probably be a learning experience. So if you need to move things along, turn the saving roll into a teachable moment.