As an autistic person, I've never understood that test scene. And I wonder if it's like that for everyone, or just me? Anyway, the idea of this game sounds really intriguing but I'm pretty sure it would be upsetting for me.
Adding the Risk map was a really clear example of theme vs mechanics, I'd never looked at it like that before! Would you say this is similar to putting out an SRD (just mechanics, no theme) rather than a game (theme + mechanics) ?
I think some SRDs strip the theme out and are just the mechanisms, while others still keep the theme + mechanisms tightly coupled, even in the SRD. Gila RPGs has done some interesting work in making a "creator kit" rather than just an SRD in this area.
Let me start by saying you run a fantastic blog and contribute a ton of interesting, valuable material to the community- I’m genuinely grateful for that <3 I’ve just been immersed for years in discussions about fictional positioning and subjective interdiegesis, the mental representations of the fictional situation in TTRPGs, story games, freeforms, larps, and dramatic improv, and this leaps out to me as the key missing piece in your post.
You use the term “theme,” but you don’t say a lot about the game’s “fiction.” From my perspective, you can’t strip a TTRPG of fiction entirely and still have something that functions as a game.
If that were possible, we’d be talking about a board game with an added layer of flavor, not a TTRPG. TTRPGs, as I understand them, don’t have fully self-sufficient, isolated from the fiction, closed formal systems like chess or tic-tac-toe.
Sure, you can reskin chess with a Lord of the Rings or post-apocalyptic mutants flavor, and it might be a fun flavor that shifts the themes emerging from play - but it’s still a board game with a color. What distinguishes TTRPGs, in my view, is that everyone at the table needs a shared (or at least functionally aligned) mental representation of the fictional situation for play to happen at all. And in TTRPGs the fiction isn’t just “theme”; it’s the core of the game. (John Harper describes this brilliantly in the Blades in the Dark, contrasting roleplaying games with board games.)
TTRPGs have fictional positioning. Assuming a more traditional adventure-game setup - players piloting characters trying to pursue their goals and solve their problems in the world - rather than various forms of storytelling games with more open, more distributed narrative control and different overall aims, it’s the fiction that determines when we don’t need to invoke mechanics, when we can invoke mechanics, and when we must invoke mechanics.
There is no TTRPG without fiction; I even call them “fiction playing games.” If you strip Inhuman Conditions of its fiction, the game’s formal system isn’t functional on its own—“ask the other person questions”? About WHAT, exactly?
And at the end, decide whether the other person is A or B. But what are A and B? And on what basis I'm deciding??
Inhuman Conditions is actually an interesting example: I’d call it a parlor larp or American Freeform (bridging freeform larp and story game), so here the fiction isn’t merely symbolic and narrated; it’s embodied, as in larp or improv—it lives in subjective interdiegesis.
You can’t strip IC of its theme and still play it, because the game doesn’t have a closed, self-contained formal system.
As an autistic person, I've never understood that test scene. And I wonder if it's like that for everyone, or just me? Anyway, the idea of this game sounds really intriguing but I'm pretty sure it would be upsetting for me.
Adding the Risk map was a really clear example of theme vs mechanics, I'd never looked at it like that before! Would you say this is similar to putting out an SRD (just mechanics, no theme) rather than a game (theme + mechanics) ?
I think some SRDs strip the theme out and are just the mechanisms, while others still keep the theme + mechanisms tightly coupled, even in the SRD. Gila RPGs has done some interesting work in making a "creator kit" rather than just an SRD in this area.
Brilliant game!! Glad you covered it; a fine example of how the lines between "TTRPG" and "board game" are blurry and changeable.
Third option: It's a game to enjoy with friends at a table 😝
The voting results are so interesting!
Agree! I honestly have no idea what to expect or where the final vote totals will end up!
Let me start by saying you run a fantastic blog and contribute a ton of interesting, valuable material to the community- I’m genuinely grateful for that <3 I’ve just been immersed for years in discussions about fictional positioning and subjective interdiegesis, the mental representations of the fictional situation in TTRPGs, story games, freeforms, larps, and dramatic improv, and this leaps out to me as the key missing piece in your post.
You use the term “theme,” but you don’t say a lot about the game’s “fiction.” From my perspective, you can’t strip a TTRPG of fiction entirely and still have something that functions as a game.
If that were possible, we’d be talking about a board game with an added layer of flavor, not a TTRPG. TTRPGs, as I understand them, don’t have fully self-sufficient, isolated from the fiction, closed formal systems like chess or tic-tac-toe.
Sure, you can reskin chess with a Lord of the Rings or post-apocalyptic mutants flavor, and it might be a fun flavor that shifts the themes emerging from play - but it’s still a board game with a color. What distinguishes TTRPGs, in my view, is that everyone at the table needs a shared (or at least functionally aligned) mental representation of the fictional situation for play to happen at all. And in TTRPGs the fiction isn’t just “theme”; it’s the core of the game. (John Harper describes this brilliantly in the Blades in the Dark, contrasting roleplaying games with board games.)
TTRPGs have fictional positioning. Assuming a more traditional adventure-game setup - players piloting characters trying to pursue their goals and solve their problems in the world - rather than various forms of storytelling games with more open, more distributed narrative control and different overall aims, it’s the fiction that determines when we don’t need to invoke mechanics, when we can invoke mechanics, and when we must invoke mechanics.
There is no TTRPG without fiction; I even call them “fiction playing games.” If you strip Inhuman Conditions of its fiction, the game’s formal system isn’t functional on its own—“ask the other person questions”? About WHAT, exactly?
And at the end, decide whether the other person is A or B. But what are A and B? And on what basis I'm deciding??
Inhuman Conditions is actually an interesting example: I’d call it a parlor larp or American Freeform (bridging freeform larp and story game), so here the fiction isn’t merely symbolic and narrated; it’s embodied, as in larp or improv—it lives in subjective interdiegesis.
You can’t strip IC of its theme and still play it, because the game doesn’t have a closed, self-contained formal system.