discovery
Welcome back, dear reader. Discovery of the unknown is at the heart of adventure, and what an adventure it is to discover the world of Nemora. This month I’ve been discovering Nemora more and more through worldbuilding in journals, through design work for AGTN, and through prose — which I’ve begun to write as I wind down before going to bed.
Playing to find out is a prevalent idea in tabletop gaming space, and was popularized in large by Lumpley Games’ Apocalypse World where the concept is described. Though the concept is more complex than this description, I will read you how it is originally described.
It’s not, for instance, your agenda to make the players lose, or to deny them what they want, or to punish them, or to control them, or to get them through your pre-planned storyline (DO NOT pre-plan a storyline)… You have to commit yourself to the game’s fiction’s own internal logic and causality, driven by the players’ characters. You have to open yourself to caring what happens, but when it comes time to say what happens, you have to set what you hope for aside… When you find something you genuinely care about—a question about what will happen that you genuinely want to find out—letting the game’s fiction decide it is uniquely satisfying
The explosion of narrative forward Powered by the Apocalypse (PBTA) games that emerged after Apocalypse World all follow the same principle, though the idea of playing to find out is by no means exclusive to PBTA. In short, this concept encourages the discovery of narrative at the table organically through play rather than a battery farmed , refined narrative. None of the careful writing, rewriting, and editing that typically comes with other mediums.
Discovery is the act of finding out or uncovering something for the first time. In this sense the idea of playing to find out, is simply asking us to be open to discovering narrative rather than crafting it ourselves. This act of discovery is something that the tabletop roleplaying medium excels at over its nearest neighbours.
In Video Games RPGs you may still uncover the narrative, but it isn’t truly ‘discovered’ as it has, by necessity, been crafted by the game designer.
Improvisation also includes discovery, but tabletop roleplaying has the unique advantage of randomness and unpredictability found in the systems designed to make decisions instead of asking a person to decide for themself.
Design verses discovery
Design, by it's very definition is the process of conceptualizing and planning something, whether that something is a gadget, a decorative plate, or a building, the intentionality of design is constant, that is to say that when we design, we make decisions about the things that we are designing.
As game masters in the TTRPG hobby we are asked to both design and discover. You will find that these two concepts are fundamentally at odds. You are told to conceptualize campaigns, design adventure locations, and prep sessions; but at the table you’re asked to put your preparation aside and play to find out.
As tabletop game designers, our role is to design discovery: how do we enable our players to discovering narrative, how do we ensure the quality of the narrative discovered, and how do we make the complex conscious decision making involved in game mastering feel unconscious to those involved? I don't have an answer to any of these questions, but these are some of the ideas I'm exploring with AGTN.
The simplest way I've found to encourage discovery at the table is to reframe the idea of the “game master”. When we inspect the idea of mastery we find it is directly at odds with discovery: mastery is defined as “acquiring complete knowledge or skill “ or to “gain control of” something. The same trouble comes with the idea of “world building”: the idea of complete knowledge and control of a world and the ability to bend it to your will.
I've chosen to use the word “Sage” for both myself as a world builder for Nemora, and for the person running sessions for AGTN. Sage means someone characterized by wisdom, and prudence. Someone having skill, good judgment, and knowledge gained from experience. Sage describes someone who has expansive knowledge of a subject, but critically this knowledge is not complete. Using the word Sage instead of “Game Master” means you are putting your trust in someone who has great knowledge, but is also wise enough, and open enough to let themselves discover.
The roles a Sage takes in AGTN are the following:
To have the confidence to imagine and discover the world for themselves.
To have the wisdom and openness to challenge their existing knowledge of the world.
To be ready to answer player’s questions if they have the right knowledge.
To know now how to use game systems to guide discovery if they do not know how to answer a question asked by a player.
Discovering Nemora
Nemora exists, not in a tangible sense, not in the sense that would get me sent to an asylum. But in saying that Nemora exists it allows me to frame my world building and writing as organic discovery: when I write I am simply discovering information that already exists, when I imagine I am looking into Nemora from afar, and when I cross out or edit, I am not changing what exists, but making errata to my incomplete knowledge as a Sage. It might sound fictitious but this idea is at the core of my approach to world building and my practice of TTRPGs in a wider sense.
So how do I do this? How do I discover? This month I’ve been writing, now when I write I'm a pantser: I don't plan my narrative. In chapter one, Niamh is singing a shanty for a crowded parlour in Wyrmsm’th Hearthside. She sings of the seas and shores of the North Eastern fief of the fairlands, I do not know the words of the song she sings but I can examine what I know, I can place myself in the world, and form there I can discover the words, without particular care for what they are.
So what do I already know? I know of the winds of the Wyrms Breath, I know of the busy rivner's fishing, I know the biting cold, and I know of Auster- the Wyrm believed to roost to the north and to inhabit waters which inherits its name. I know the rivners of Auster venerate the Wyrm and invoke it's name in hope of calm seas and good hauls. So here's the song. (I decided to sing for the transcript so check it out if you like)
Auster’s cradle
As performed by Niamh Baker
chorus
It’s a hard life in Auster’s cradle;
waters cold and winds unstable.
Good life in Auster’s graces;
pantry stocked and warm embraces.
Under Auster’s eyes we sail;
scales of weeds and breath of gales.
Under Auster’s wills we stay
above the waters gently swayed.
chorus
When moon rises Auster sees
rivners shelter by the trees.
When sun rises Auster knows
fogs they settle ‘nd gales they blow.
chorus
Austers waters wide do spread;
ropes give slack and sail ahead.
Auster’s waters high they rise;
bow holds strong and gulls they cries .
chorus
Mount Auster high and seabeds low;
Cast the nets they overflow.
Auster’s cliffs so steep they be,
Taste the waters feel the breeze.
chorus
Does it make sense that these rivners feel blessed to live in the coldest, windiest, and foggiest place they know? Not really, but as a Sage it's my job to discover, not design. If I designed this song I would probably have written of rivners working against the harsh wind, singing of boats wrecked on the cliffs, or beacon keepers illuminating the waters of lake Auster. But in imagining and not filtering the discoveries, I also discovered things about the people: they value the warmth of their home, their full bellies, and are overall relatively optimistic. I discovered the voice of young Niamh as she sung, and I discovered the name of the fief - Auster’s Cradle, which you'll see reflected in the map below.
Discovering Character
When it comes to character, we learned a few lessons from the playtests that needed to be implemented you’ll see the resulting character creation laid out graphically below. When we create adventurers for Nemora we let go of the of the idea that your adventurer is your own creation, we instead discover them collaboratively, shape them, and give them space to evolve and grow.
Adventurous Natures are a key revision to this system, they provide guidance where there previously was none, and they reward players with experience for making roleplay choices that align with their character’s personality. A character’s two adventurous natures say a little bit about the character’s core personality: each nature come with some core skills and approaches, a drive, and a talent. Providing choice between two options within the natures was intentional, it creates simple and fun choices during character creation, and it means that two ‘Playful’ adventurers can still be significantly different down the line.
The creation process sees the table create a pool of unfinished adventurers large enough so that each person can have three. As we create unfinished adventurers we pass the sheets around making choices for each phase, this adds a human-randomness: a sense of discovery and authenticity that you can’t get with true randomness or just by choosing for yourself. We then imagine all the adventurers as collectively as the table, describing our initial thoughts. Then each person selects an adventurer or two and finishes them off, discovering this person along the way, a person who they are not solely responsible for creating. This helps build the table’s investment in everyone’s characters as its likely that everyone had a hand in multiple other characters at the table: even the Sage who chooses some unfinished adventurers and enshrines them into Nemora as characters of the world.
In writing on character creation I also decided to tackle roleplay principles. This was an interesting and difficult topic, and it resulted in a neat mechanic that encourages and rewards players for discovering their character. As a player, I often find myself rolling to see what my character feels or thinks, or what they do: this is one of the most fun parts of roleplaying for me and I have seen multiple players at my tables do the same. So I thought why not make it an optional mechanic?
Relinquish control - when your adventurer is faced with a critical choice you are always free to relinquish control to your adventurer. When you do so, name the two courses of action your adventurer is deciding between and choose an approach that best represents each choice. Mark a boon and roll both approaches, whichever is higher is the choice your adventurer makes in the heat of the moment. If the results are equal your adventurer freezes and takes a third course of action decided by the sage. If you relinquish control when deciding what approach to use for a check, you may immediately invoke your boon to use the result of this roll to determine your approach for the check.
I won’t discuss this mechanic in depth, but it does a few critical things that I really like:
It takes the pressure off the player to make “right choices”
It forces players to roleplay by bringing out their adventurer’s inner process for the table.
It promotes discovery by introducing a random aspect.
It creates tension in critical moments by implementing the threat of the freezing
It mechanically rewards the player with a boon or by letting them use the higher of two rolls for a check
I’ll wrap this newsletter up by leaving you with an abridged version of a roleplay principle I’ve written for AGTN which I think is quite fitting for this issue:
When you play an Adventurer in Nemora, consider them a unique and complex person distinct from yourself— you do not own, control , or even fully understand your character. Allow your character to develop their own internal world distinct from your own, let their actions surprise you and allow them to do things which you wouldn’t. It is okay not to know how your character feels or what they would do in any given situation.
As a player you should advocate for your character’s emotions and desires; and you should do your best to portray them truthfully… but like it or not, you do not know your adventurer as you know yourself: they know things you don’t know, and think things you don’t think. Your adventurer lives in a world unlike your own, they’ve seen things, heard things, and experienced things you never have, and never will experience.
During the writing of this issue I accidentally wrote what can stand on its own as a issue on the design of magick in AGTN, I’ll post it sooner rather than later, but for now discovery will have to do.
Bye for now,
Felix