DCC across the 2 Axes of Abstraction

Murkdice wrote about what games are about based on what they have rules for and what they don't have rules for. It's an interesting ludological article, though I'm somewhat skeptical of the suggestion that anyone seriously claims 5e isn't about combat specifically because most of its rules are for combat, though. There were some cool four-sector charts in there so I wanted to do one for DCC, and in the process I had a few thoughts of my own about what the axes of abstraction actually tell us.

Go check out the original article. There's more charts!

It's a bit more cluttered than Murkdice's examples but the point of that post wasn't to deep dive into any one game, it was to demonstrate an overall point about what games tell us they are about.

When you illustrate the point like this, it becomes clear that the things the game is about are the things it expects to become complex. This is true across the entire coded-free spectrum. DCC goes to great lengths to tell you about all the things it wants you to do but doesn't have specific rules for, so it's really a perfect demonstration of this.

DCC is about unpredictable magic because it has a lot of rules and charts to follow (making it complex), and DCC is about Questing For It because it leaves the quest-and-reward process open and free (making it complex). You can entirely throw away the axis of codedness and find that the number of rules a game has about a particular thing actually has no correlation to what the game is about.

It turns out a game is actually about what you spend time focusing on while you play it.

12 months in

Wow. It's been a year.

Twelve months ago now I posted my first post to 19 Sided Die. It was a reddit post I put together more or less on a whim, and once I posted that it just kept flowing. I couldn't stop writing. After the first post I jotted down a list of all the ideas that came to me and I still have some of those original ideas left.

But it's slowed down in recent months. At least one person has asked me why - that person being Toast over at Scrolls from the Toaster, who recently celebrated his 100th post and shouted me out. The feeling is mutual, Toast. Our side-by-side growth has been very encouraging for me.

As for why: nothing is wrong, I've just been writing less. I reached a point where I had to tell myself that was okay, after I missed my first weekly post in over nine months. Since mere weeks after I started this blog, I've had a son to look after. That means he's almost 1 and my spare time has only been shrinking as he's increased in both mobility and appetite. Because of this, I've had to be choosy with my hobbies - especially those involving sitting in front of a screen.

I don't always get a couple of hours spare time in a week to write a post, and my backlog ran out a while ago. I still have plenty of material to work with though, so if anyone else is out there waiting for me to post each Wednesday, stick around.

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In December I started what I called the blog100 challenge. Out of the series of 100 questions by d4 caltrops I completed 9 before falling off the wagon. Along the way, at least 3 others started their own blog100's. I'll consider that a success - although I really should get back to it!

I'm still struggling to answer that tenth question. It's one of the few that doesn't feel relevant to me, but I'll find a way to do it. These posts may move from the Sunday slot to the Wednesday slot in order to keep a weekly pace if that works out better for me. We'll see.

I also recently came to learn that Throne of Salt did something similar in January, independent of the challenge, by answering all 100 questions across four posts. Very cool!

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Six months ago I talked about the goals I set when starting this blog and how it felt to stick to those goals. In as much time again, I had double the readers with far less effort. I'm not sure what the lesson is there, if there is one. I'm happy to be taking it more casually than I was, but at the same time I miss the schedule and the regular discourse. I'm glad people are still around, reading my stuff. In fact, within just the last few months I began to hear back from players who had actually used some of my classes - in particular the Ranger (whose skills have received some reworking) and the Dragon. On that note, the Dragon might be the most polished thing I've put out there, so it's nice to see it continuing to get some attention.

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What's next for 19 Sided Die? I dunno. There's a lot on the backburner. Tell me if any of this sounds neat.

• OD&D has been a fixation of mine for a while. I want to talk about a lot of OD&D related stuff.
• That list of ideas from the beginning still has a dozen topics remaining, and I've jotted down about three dozen since. Each of these is at least a post's worth of content, some of them have expanded beyond that.
• One of those topics, I could fill a book. This isn't a promise - if anything, it's the opposite. Scope creep may just kill this one.
• Another one of those topics feels like it should be in zine format. This one is more likely to see the light of day.
• Anybody interested in Obsidian related content? I've used it to prep and keep session notes since before beginning this blog, but I've really only just recently taken the deep dive into what it can truly do. For here I'll most likely keep it to the TTRPG space, but Obsidian for TTRPGs is a whole beast of its own.
• Send help, Obsidian is taking over my life.
• A ton of old posts that need to be revisited.
• Downloadable PDF versions of my content.

It's okay to be underprepared - [blog100] pt. 8, q. 84

This post is part of a series where I put forth a challenge for bloggers to answer all 100 questions on this table by d4 Caltrops. This week I rolled an 84.

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84. What is a Ruling you Regret or wish you would have handled differently?

The first game I ran was The Portal Under the Stars. I don't just mean the first game of DCC, I mean the first I ever ran at all. I was incredibly nervous (not just for running the game, but I only really knew one of the players!), but I thought hey, I've gone over the module twice and re-written it as my own notes - surely by this point I could just run the module as is and it'll be fine. I did have one question though: what will the players do when they figure out that the solution to the entrance puzzle is to wait?

Well, I predicted they'd want to go to town for a couple of hours to kill time... and yet I did not prepare for that. The end result was me deciding, on the fly, that the town was just slightly too far away from the dungeon location for them to get there and back in time. I admitted to them that I wasn't prepared to run the town, but now I wish I'd let them do it.

What stopped me from prepping a town, if I had predicted they'd try to go there? You'd be right to think that was pretty foolish of me. To be honest, the prep just felt like too big of a task.

That's where I went wrong. Perhaps now that I've got experience under my belt I'm looking at this in a way that is unrealistic to expect of my first-time-Judge self, but it would have been totally fine to just wing it. Even the stuff that I later prepared for the town, I really could have just handwaved in the moment and fleshed the details out as necessary later.

Prepping a town wasn't too big of a task - I was expecting too much of myself. I could have done minimal prep. One tavern. That's probably the only place that's open at night anyway. Player characters' homes? They're all peasants, they're already carrying their best gear anyway. Your home has like, a straw bed and one chair. You brought all the good gear with you. Just answer the questions the players ask, there was no need to build the entire town.

All the prep I did later for the town? I made that up too. I could've done it at the table. Instead, I said no.

Saying yes can be nerve-wracking when the question was something you weren't prepared for, and yet I've found Judging to be a much easier task since I committed to doing that. That's not to say I don't still prep, I don't still feel underprepared, and I don't still feel the compulsive need to over-prep. I do. I just know now that it'll be fine if I wing it. The goal is a fun night, not a perfect game.

You'll be fine.

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Here is where I'll link your blog if you join me on this 100-post journey through 100 questions.

Gaming Snacks - [blog100] pt. 4, q. 73

This post is part of a series where I put forth a challenge for bloggers to answer all 100 questions on this table by d4 Caltrops. This week I rolled a 73.

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73. What are the best Snacks you've found that work during a Game?

This question is a bit fluffy, but hey, let's roll with it.

It largely depends on the timeslot. I have two regular groups I play with. The 5e table I play in is frequent, short sessions, with players who mostly don't have kids. The DCC table I run is infrequent, longer sessions, with players who mostly do have kids. These factors are relevant to meal times, so that complicates the snack situation a bit.

The shorter sessions are covered by whichever random snacks someone happens to bring on the day. This system works fine.

The less frequent games on the other hand almost need to be organized around meals, and usually include a break for a meal somewhere in the middle. I say "break" - we don't entirely stop playing to eat, but have you ever tried to run a game while eating a bowl of curry? I consider it lucky that we've only ruined one single character sheet by staining it with korma. So there's a snack that certainly doesn't work. Pick something less saucy.

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Here is where I'll link your blog if you join me on this 100-post journey through 100 questions.

This week, Scrolls from the Toaster talks about where undead come from, which is far more interesting than what I eat.

6 months in

Six months ago to the day, I posted my first article and 19 Sided Die was born. It was a post originally written for reddit, almost on a whim, about something I thought was mechanically interesting that I still don't know if I'll ever actually use.

It's interesting to look back on that and see how my style has changed even in half a year. It's developed faster in this time than ever before. Probably because I've never spent so much time writing all this RPG stuff that bounces around my brain down in (what's intended to be) a coherent form. My gaming preferences have shifted, my writing style has developed, and I'm currently playing more RPGs than I have at any point in my life.

When I set out, I had a vague goal of posting every week for an indeterminate time. Once a month passed and I'd accrued about 1,000 page views, I thought it would be neat if I could keep that going for 6 months.

I hit the 6,000 mark just before 5 months.

It's not about the numbers - if it were, that's a wholly unimpressive amount in this age of the internet. All I've done is write regularly and post on one subreddit regularly. I've dabbled in posting elsewhere - it nets more readers, which is nice, but I'm trying to engage with people rather than just catch as many eyes as possible.

What really feels good is that I decided to start doing a regularly scheduled thing and I did.

I've enjoyed the discourse on my comments sections (moreso on reddit than directly here, only because that's the larger platform) and I even seem to have a few regular readers. That's awesome. I've landed on a few blogrolls and noticed a few links coming in from other blogs.

I love that some of my ideas have resonated with others, and the ideas that don't stick have been met with constructive feedback.

I don't really know how to wrap this post up, but I know I don't intend to wrap up 19 Sided Die any time soon.

Barbarian Patron for Warriors by Reddit user RithKingWill

Reddit user RithKingWill has been inspired by my post where I talked about Barbarians (among other classes)! I personally see this as an accomplishment. I am thrilled that people have been engaging with my posts, and now at least one person has taken it upon themselves to expand it into a fully usable demipatron with Invoke Patron effects, patron taint, and spellburn tables. It almost functions as seven patrons in one, because there is a choice of animal totems to draw power from.

It does contain two AI generated images in the margins if you care about that sort of thing.

Here it is.