Thread by @Epidiah

This is one of my all-time favorites.

It's a brilliant design from 1987 that was decades ahead of its time.

Or, to be more accurate, it was right in its time and the rest of us are decades behind.

https://twitter.com/SystemMastery/status/1158385937937620992

Re-reading my copy now. So much to talk about in these rules!

I feel a thread coming on. It'll probably have to wait until tomorrow, but there will be thread.

"Fortunately, this isn't a normal roleplaying game."

Time for the foretold thread!

The content of the box is definitely eye-catching! Cards, standees, spinners, PUPPETS!

This is the 1st of many glimpses the game offers into the future of #ttrpg—a colorful jumble of barely sensical stretch goal detritus, 2 whole decades before Kickstarter was even launched!

Now don't read me wrong here, I adore every last bit in this box, but the indie publisher in me also very much loves the fact that you could sell a working version of the game as a pdf of the rules & print-on-demand cards. Provided you swapped dice for spinners.

We'll get to all that in a bit. Right now, I want to talk about voice.

There is a strain of roleplayer out there that craves #ttrpg texts with little to no intrusion from the authorial voice. They want as dry & direct a delivery of the rules as possible.

& I know they're out there, because I can just about make out the shore of their far off land from where I stand. Sometimes I go there on holiday.

But where I live, rules are served with a toothsome helping of authorial voice.

I'm not saying it always works, but I appreciate the effort.

Folks, the sheer quantity of voices in this rules text!

And the layers!

Mr. Know-It-All is the dominant voice of the text, but as he tries to explain the rules, he is interrupted multiple times per page by other characters from the cartoon, either in the text or via cartoon illustrations—even by Bullwinkle, himself. Take that Serkis!

Wait, sorry, I may have to explain that last one for folks who didn't grow up with Rocky & Bullwinkle.

Mr. Know-It-All is a character played by the character of Bullwinkle, who in turn is a character you can play in the game.

Could write another thread about how confusing this thing is in text, but how naturally we navigate it in play, but we're not here for that!

We're here for the games!

There are 3 of them in this box: The Narration Game, The Everybody Can Do Something Game, & the Graduate Game.

The entire Narration Game only takes up 2¼ pages, but what it packs into those 2¼ pages back in the late 80s!

Alright, the long & the short of it:

Deal out some cards to everyone.

Pick a story from the booklet handily labeled "Stories" and read aloud both the "The Story So Far" and the "The Ending" sections.

Then take turns narrating the characters from the former to the latter.

On your turn, you narrate & try to incorporate one of the cards in your hand into the story. The cards have people, objects, ideas, hapless fates, all sorts of evocative details. There's even an accompanying handbook to explain them & perhaps give you a little more to work with.

Every time you incorporate a card, discard it and play passes to the next player. Once everyone's down to single card, you all get a chance to swap that card for a new one (something you can do throughout, which is very kind of the designers) and then…

…everyone with an idea for how to end the story (bringing it to the "The Ending" state read aloud when you started it) tosses their last card in. The first card down gets to narrate it (being sure to hit that Ending and incorporate their card).

Then you fill out diplomas and award then to one another, because that's the kind of thing you do when you're friends!

Okay, let's talk moose.

All this seems pretty simple & straightforward, Eppy. I mean, sure, it's probably fun, but why are you—a game designer respected around the globe & beyond for his insight & devilishly good looks—gushing about it so?

First off, this is just 1 of 3 games. It's a warm-up game. It's both a way to introduce a crowd unfamiliar to roleplaying games to vital concepts & a fallback for when you want to play, but for whatever reason don't have the wherewithal for one of the other games at the moment.

That's something I'd love to see more of out there. "FUCK only three of us can make it tonight. We're going to miss #DnD/#ApocalypseWorld/#TopSecretSI again! Well, at least we can play that particular game's Narration Game to play. The night's not a total loss!"

Then, we've got a GMless/GMful game from the late 80s! I ain't saying that was unheard of back then, but only in furtive whispers.

I mean, sure, it's focused more on telling stories than playing roles, but before you push your glasses up, know your GMless role game is coming.

Check out that fate play, though!

You sit down & the first thing you do is read out how the story begins AND ends. You know where you're going. You just don't know how you're getting there. That's powerful stuff! And a lot of cutting edge games use that to amazing effect.

& how easy is it to design scenarios for this? It comes with a booklet full of them, but "The Story So Far" & "The Ending" are just a few paragraphs of work. That's it.

Such an elegant scenario design system that it's no wonder Fastaval took the year of its publication off.

Even just having a mechanism for ending a game was ahead of its time, presaging a ton of indie #ttrpg design in the early 2000s.

I'm calling myself out here.

So much of Swords Without Master is consciously or unconsciously modeled on what's happening here. "The City of Fire & Coin" was an attempt at a warm-up game of sorts. It doesn't check all the boxes this one does, but the idea is there.

Passing narration, incorporating of cards (or tones and threads in Swords' case), an end game mechanic, the text with a voice appropriate to the subject of the game—hell, the fact that the objective of the game is clearly stated & writing motifs ~ writing diplomas!

I owe a lot to these 2¼ pages!

But folks, we haven't even scratch the surface yet.

Wait! One last word on the diplomas before we move on to "The Everybody Can Do Something Game"!

Soon these diplomas will have a mechanical effect, but right now they are something much more useful to a game designer.

Right now they are a debrief that says, from one player to another, you and your contributions were an important part of this game.

This encourages players to end your game thinking about the highlights of that game & feeling good about playing it.

Designers, you want this.

The Everybody Can Do Something Game is where we start playing specific roles, including that of the Narrator.

P.S. The Narrator is a magnificent name for this role given the subject of the game. Fucking magnificent.

This version of the game brings in the character standees and their spinners along with the roles.

In the ECDSG you choose a story to do, just like in the NG, but now you also pick characters from those available to the story. Each character has a standee with an illustration facing out and all your powers facing in (more on those later). Each character also has a spinner.

(Some may even have puppets. Like minis in #DnD, these are optional. Unlike minis in #DnD, these are truly optional.)

Just like in the NG, you get a handful of cards to play.

One of you will also start with the narrator standee, so will both be playing a character and the narrator.

I'm not going to explain how the whole game works, I promise. I just want to hit the highlights.

But I just might explain the whole game along the way. We'll see.

This is a much more familiar #ttrpg set up. People are playing their roles & looking to the Narrator to see what happens. The Narrator being just another player who happens to be the Narrator in this very moment.

Like the NG, you play cards out of your hand in the ECDSG.

But you only play them in response to one of the Narrator's questions.

Or, if you are the Narrator, in response to someone failing (which, as we will see, happens all the time).

Like in the NG, you want to empty your hand. Unlike in the NG, it's possible for some folks to empty their hands before others.

There's something of a competitive edge here. There are even teams: The Good Guys & the Bad Guys. (Rocky & Bullwinkle Cartoons were binary like that.)

Each story now not only has "The Story So Far" and "The Ending," but also has "The Goals" for both the Good Guys & the Bad Guys.

Your objective, as a player, is to empty your hand and use your last card to achieve the stated goal for your team.

But also to have fun. Probably keep that in mind, too.

Alright, so check this out. When you're the Narrator, you get to steer the story a bit with your questions. When someone tries something they can't, it's on you to tell them they have to spin for it, & when things go wrong…

…you decide how and to what extent. SUCH POWER!

But, you're also trying to get rid of your cards by incorporating them into your narration. And this is precisely what causes the mantle of the Narrator to be passed along.

Play a card, pass the Narrator standee.

The rules explicitly state that you do not have to be an impartial Narrator. Your team is going to fail and you're going to describe them failing forward. And if you can, you're going to drop a card while doing it. & it's all good, because the other team is going to do the same.

Failure in this game is sooooo important.

Look at these spinners! Peabody & Sherman are the only characters in the game with better than 50% odds.

Then it looks like Horse has 50% and Natasha has just under.

Most characters will fail most of the time.

And that's the point.

The rules also state that you can always choose to fail.

(Take that, Dread! And you thought you were being so fucking innovative!)

Some folks, like Cpt. Peachfuzz, have powers that make them fail even more often.

Your characters need to be fictionally positioned to achieve their goals when you use your last card. But your characters fail all the time. BUT you & your teammate get to be the Narrator from time to time, which lets you let them bumble into the perfect fictional position.

That bit of design, that's a thing of grace, right there. A bit breathtaking.

There's more to the ECDSG—like powers that let characters do extraordinary things, either with a spin or without; or how you can collect & spend diplomas to succeed; or rules for handling cases where a power is opposes a card or whatnot—but I think you get the gist of it.

It's still got all the juicy innovations of the NG, but now with more parts!

The only thing left to talk about is the Graduate Game!

Here's the thing about the Graduate Game, it's basically a handful of rules & guidelines for making your own characters, powers, & stories.

The only thing missing between the Graduate Game and a complete reskin of the game is some advice on building a new deck. And honestly, how much advice do you need?

That's how fucking close we were to a golden age of Powered by Moose & Squirrel games.