cross section
welcome back, dear reader. This month I’ve been mainly putting together the building blocks for a new campaign with AGTN… and with a new campaign comes new players, and with new players comes the need to teach the rules. So with that in mind I’ve decided take a step back and focus on how to create good resources for players to learn without reading the whole darn book.
So what makes a good teaching resource and how can we make resources that are easy to follow?
Teaching resources need to be dense and manageable, this means explaining the broad strokes succinctly, and leaving out details that aren’t crucial to understanding how to play the game. They should allow readers to begin at the beginning and finish at the end without the need to flip backwards and forwards. This means nailing down the order in which the resource is laid out is vital to its success. You can’t just go explaining a mechanic that references a bunch of other unfamiliar mechanics. And finally, it should be concise: we have to pick and choose what to include, only include the rules most players will use every session.
My favourite example of a teaching resource comes from Peril Planet’s Freeform Universal 2E beta rules. The very first thing in the book is “Fast FU”: a two page spread that has all the information required to play at the very basic level. This instantly gives you a frame of reference for the rest of the book, and while I may or may not be able to condense AGTN into two pages its definitely a good goal!
bore-ing
Picture yourself boring — like a geologist. Picture yourself boring into a TTRPG. How do we analyse all that dirt, rock and stone, and reconstruct it into a much more succinct and dense product? I’ve created a sieve, some categories for the kinds of information you might find in a TTRPG. You’ll find the categories defined below, with the some of the mechanics of AGTN sieved out into their respective piles:
The Heart of a game are its un-designed underlying element: things which are present throughout the text and during play.
eg themes, ideas, narrative conventions and design goalsThe INNER CORE of a game is the central mechanic or mechanics that the table uses to answer questions about what happens next in the narrative.
eg randomizers (dice chain, action vs approach), and Core variables (skill value, and difficulty value, increases, and decreases in die size)The OUTER CORE mechanics of a game bring the Heart of a game into play. Mechanics typically belong in the outer core if they interface with the Inner Core in a way that reinforces themes and ideas.
eg. resource tracks, talents, fortune, how to use difficulties, skills, approaches, and action dice, travel rules, and gearThe MANTLE of a game are mechanics that fill out the play experience. They might not neccessarily interact with the central mechanic in a way thats meaningful to the heart of the game, but they are useful at the table. They also serve as points of interaction that a designer might play with when designing the rest of the game.
eg inventory management, injuries, combat rules, downtime, advancementThe CRUST is everything else the table needs to play the game or answer questions about the narrative.
eg setting information, player options, advice, gear options
core samples
So how do we use these categories? I thought we’d take a core sample of the D&D 5th edition System Reference Document. Its astounding how much they provide you for free… at the time or writing its a 408 page document. While a lot of content is great, when you inspect what information makes up the document you’ll see that only about 10-15% of the document is high value for learning to play.
Here’s my core sample:
HEART. Everpresent, but 0 explicit pages
INNER CORE. 8 pages
using ability scores
OUTER CORE. 15-20 pages
combat rules
damage
healing
spellcasting
resting
MANTLE. 40-50 pages
creating characters
travel
basic items
poisions, diseases, madness
conditions
making monsters
CRUST. A whopping 330 pages!
player options (around 50 pages)
spell options (around 50 pages)
magic items (around 50 pages)
monster statblocks (150 pages)
The SRD is not a learning resource but it makes you think about just how much of a TTRPG is made up of mostly supplementary information. Unfortunately there’s a pretty direct inverse relationship between how important information is, and the number of pages it takes up in a rulebook. This makes learning a new TTRPG really daunting. Imagine being given the 408 page SRD… you wouldn’t know where to start! But really you only need to learn about 25 pages to play, and about 100 to run the game!
This inverse relationship isn’t great for players, but it IS great for us trying to make a teaching resource as we only need to include very important information, and thats the very information that takes up the least space.
the ideal teaching core
Using these categories we can decide what information goes into the teaching resource. We can ignore the Crust almost entirely, and we can discard most of the Mantle, mentioning it in passing where necessary for context. The Inner and Outer core are where we really focus for a “Fast FU style” teaching resource, and this is reflected in the graphic above. In interest of keeping the resource short I’ve unfortunately omitted any explicit reference to the Heart, sacrifices have to be made
So we know what we’re including, but how do we make it flow nicely? Behind the scenes I made a little map which I’ve attached below. I then “chunked” the map into interconnected sections. This was useful to decide the order in which to tackle the mechanics. I’ve also attached the final “one (4) page” teaching resource and I’ve roughly colour coded both the mechanic map and the resource into the categories we’ve been using.
contextualizing the core
After finishing the teaching resource I was made aware of the One Page RPG Jam 2024 hosted by Unknown Dungeon. And since I was already thinking in the realm of constrained design I decided I’d take a crack at it. Here we’ll use this quick design as a case study of how to use the categories when designing. The main guideline of the game jam is that:
“all the rules required to play must fit on 1 side of 1 sheet of paper”
Before the theme of the Jam was announced I decided to set up the layout of the zine. Having already thought about how much of what to put into a game I set up my inner core using AGTN’s approach dice and action die, and left the rest of the space for outer core, and mantle which I’d design when the theme was revealed. I’ve recreated the document at this stage and again colour coded it. Notice all of the back side of the sheet of paper is crust — rules you don’t need to read to play.
The one big thing I noticed in this game jam is that you have to be incredibly efficient, and its vital that you’re succinct. This is what a lot of participants seem to forget, they force their idea for a game onto one sheet of paper instead of designing for a single piece of paper. After setting up the inner core, there was only really space for a couple of paragraphs of outer core rules, and these rules needed to express the entire heart of the game.
The theme of the Jam ended up being TRANSPORT. I decided to base my submission around the idea that you play a measly minion transporting some precious cargo for your master, hopefully without damaging it. My favorite examples of efficient design in Precious Cargoes are how the few rules in the outer core brought the heart of “don’t damage the cargo” into every single roll.
Two of the four possible ways a player can increase their odds of success engage directly with cargo damage. And because of the fact that your cargo might sustain damage if a check draws, every roll also comes with some degree of risk. This ever present threat of damage creates a real tension at the table, and when I tested the game it really seemed to influence how players engage with the world.
bringing it back together
With a one-pager its easy to pick a central and specific theme and design towards it, but with a larger text like AGTN, even I’ll admit I’m not sure what themes a few of the choices reinforce — especially with my rules for combat. Interestingly because “heroic combat” is at the heart of D&D the combat rules went into the Inner Core, whereas in the AGTN combat feels like mantle in AGTN… What do I do with that information? I’m not sure yet.
After all that writing and rewriting it feels like I haven’t made any progress towards AGTN… and well strictly speaking that’s correct. But taking a look at AGTN with the lens of efficiency and succinctness has given me a few ideas on how to simplify some mechanics. And this analysis has definitely contributed towards what the final book will look like once playtesting is wrapped and I take out the red pen for an editing/rewriting pass. Oh, and after using it to great success in Precious Cargoes I’ve really realized the power of the draw result in an approach vs action mechanic like AGTN’s.
And alas, here we are at the end of the month already! My campaign prep is still chugging along and I’m going to make a commitment that next issue wont include much of the serious ‘design interrogation’. Maybe some worldbuilding, a poem, a song, or some kind of micro narrative! OH! And I set up my Itch.io store, with a fancy little brand “Fairland Press”.
Anyway, enough rabbiting on..
Bye for now!
Felix