What's the best #ttrpg for a #solarpunk campaign?
@peterdrake I have been thinking about this for a while now, and I believe I finally have an answer that I'm satisfied with: Twilight 2000.
I know, you're confused. You're wondering why a game like T2K would even remotely be considered #solarpunk. It's very simple.
In T2K, you as protagonist characters have the opportunity to make a better future from a collapsed and fallen one. The pieces are all around you to do so.
But also, unlike most solarpunk games, there is no predefined definition of what "better" actually means. You are free to decide for yourself and given your situation what better is.
Not only that, you are free to decide what mechanisms you bring to bear in order to make that better world come about. Some threats won't be amenable to a simple conversation and a small meal.
Some threats you have to have heavy artillery and a couple of flanking infantry units to deal with. Not everybody will be on board with your idea of the perfect solarpunk future.
You want to build an outpost of civilization amidst the fallen ruins of the old, the latest edition has all the tools you need to make that happen. But it also includes all of the mechanics that tell you why it's very, very hard. And will always be a struggle.
@lextenebris Interesting. I had the impression that T2K focused almost entirely on combat operations.
@peterdrake It does not. There are entire sections on establishing and maintaining a community. Scavenging the surrounding territory in order to find the things that you need in order to build up the necessities. But it's always been that way to one degree or another, even in the previous three editions.
T2K Living Steel, and the Morrow Project are probably the best and oldest examples of futurist community building RPGs, which everyone who says that they are into futurist community-building RPGs immediately disparages or doesn't know about
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_Steel
@lextenebris Again, interesting. I do like the idea of having detailed (but not incredibly fiddly) rules for simulating resource/infrastructure issues. Are there more modern games that do this, or are the "simulation" players all running these and other old-school games like Traveller and GURPS?
From the artwork, these all seem pretty grim -- there's been a horror apocalypse and everybody is packing multiple guns. I'm not saying I want to run a game where anthropomorphic woodland creatures sit around drinking tea and talking about their feelings, but I'd like to see a world the players want to live in and protect.
I know opinions vary wildly, but I'm imagining solarpunk as being about (1) imagining a plausible world we'd like to live in, then (2) figuring how to get there. With climate dread and specter of galloping christofascism, people need to see any path to hope.
Have you listened to the @SolarpunkPrompts podcast?
@peterdrake @SolarpunkPrompts There are two prongs of modern games that focus on things like building communities, developing towns, etc. One of my favorite third-party supplements is Ironsworn: Reign, which plugs in some really excellent evolutionary mechanics to #Ironsworn , letting you do anything from build up your local tavern to assemble and command the assault of a major army against an enemy force.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/419256/Ironsworn-Reign
The Quiet Year is an extremely modern game which centers on building out the little map of a community after its collapse and then you play through the next year inspired narratively by car draws it sounds very mechanical but in practice a story emerges naturally from the process, inevitably, inexorably. #TheQuietYear
https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-quiet-year
Band of Blades is a game in which you play simultaneously an army in retreat, the members of the command staff deciding what happens, and the grunts on the front lines fighting and dying for their brothers. Building and maintaining both the material and the moral support structures of the army is extremely vital and necessary work. #BandOfBlades
@lextenebris I've got (but haven't played) both Ironsworn: Starforged and The Quiet Year. I'm intrigued, but nervous about what seem like a series of creative writing prompts that then leave it up to the players and GM to decide what happens. On the other hand, it's very easy for a simulation to become busywork that detracts from the story.
@peterdrake I maintain that #Starforged is the best RPG released in the last several years and I would be open to the argument that it is the best RPG released in the last decade, and this is coming from someone who literally lives in a TTRPG library with about 40 feet of shelving (and that's not an exaggeration) full of RPGs dating back to the beginning of the hobby and some texts predating the hobby as it's currently known. When I give high praise, I really mean it. It's an incredible game design in the fact that it has an open license means that there are tons of third-party supplements and tools that expand things in amazing directions. Though I haven't seen anyone retrofitted onto hard-core wargaming with a map focus, which I want to tinker with at some point.
Seriously, it's that good.
What you want to grab onto if you're looking for structure in the Ironsworn-lineage of design is not to look at the oracles as a source of creative writing prompts. The most important rule is thus:
"Do what is the most interesting and obvious. If you have a question about something that is not obvious, then go to an Oracle."
@peterdrake Realistically in every #TTRPG, the whole experience is either a series of creative writing prompts or someone cramming a story down your throat that you had no part in really choosing. If we must decide between the starkest of contrasts, I'll go with creative writing prompts every time. Otherwise I'm going to get stuck being the GM for another series of decades and I'm not doing that. I want to play with my friends, I don't want the responsibility of entertaining my friends. I want to facilitate, I don't want to run. Nor do I want to be run.
I have strong feelings about this.
If #Starforged seems too narrative, that's why games like Five Leagues from the Borderland exist. They are more mechanical, they are more crunchy, and they focus on what can be more easily mechanized – often combat. It's great fun and you can tell a story through ongoing series of conflicts with some relatively lightweight narrative mechanics stringing them together. That's what adventure wargaming does very well.
When it's not in doubt, the obvious thing happens. Otherwise inject randomness, interpret the runes, and proceed forward.
Unless there is a story already extant outside the sphere of player experience, that's every game. It's what you should want for every game.
@lextenebris Yes -- after the last few games I've run, I've realized that the GM shouldn't create the adventure (locations, NPCs, what the shadowy factions are up to) until after character generation. Make the world about these characters. Pregenerated adventures put the players on a rail, which is bad whether or not they stay on it.
(I've probably only got about 6 feet of TTRPGs, but 1st edition AD&D is in there!)
@peterdrake And even then you're overpreparing. One of my favorite pieces of advice actually started in an RPG I don't like at all, Apocalypse World. It's been inherited throughout all the RPGs which have descended from it, and it is the best piece of knowledge you can have when running a game.
"Play to find out."
That's it. That's why we're at the table. That is why we are spending time together. That is why we are playing a game that involves a narrative. That is why you are creating characters, which theoretically have motivations, desires, and frustrations. We are playing to find out. We are not playing to tell somebody, and we are not playing to be told.
Aside from not wanting to GM anymore, there's a good reason that I have spent the last couple of decades (and it hurts to say how long that's been) specializing in games which are #GMless .
There are games that make this easy and there are games that make this almost impossible. Don't make it harder on yourself than it has to be.
#TTRPG