You could have hypothetically modified the rules of whatever napoleonic wargame they were playing with pewter miniatures in Arneson’s basement to accommodate Conan but why bother? They wrote D&D instead. I think there’s something to be said for how many blasted B/X clones we have and how few new modes of play are evolving. These games lack teeth, lack character, because they are not representative of someone’s personal appendix N.
Discuss my substack poast here.
It never fails to amuse me to observe the correlation between a game that is interesting and run well and the GM and players who are functionally literate in the content of Appendix N. There simply is no game without them. We can see that in a literal sense in understanding that the farther the game has gotten from its source literature the stranger it has become to those who enjoy that literature, what the fuck am I expected to relate a Critical Role character to in Howardian fiction? The most obtrusive and gross trend in TTRPG is the invective that modern persons are to be represented in the game in a meaningful way, which from its inception in a community of historical wargamers to the publishing of material for the first time was never the case or intention. If you want to go play modern fighter go fuck with Black Powder Red Earth, wizards in that game are FA-18 Growlers you just imagine are covering your area of operations. TTRPG is about being a square jawed 9th century bludgeoner of that which goes bump in the night, anything else is wrinklegrass projection by elements of society who cannot personally relate to the historical fighting man and his mythic-historical context.
What gets me really is that people have this insipid like gnostic self-centeredness where they treat rules like “engines” to be customized. Thats not what the game is for. Its like they think they’re so much smarter and possessed of such superior taste that they feel as though they can treat huge portions of the game as vestigial. Its one thing if the game is in fact a slurry of nothing (like skyrim) but if someone treated my game that way I’d be offended.
How i learned to stop worrying and love the (tree) bomb. After playing ACKs for like 3 years or whatever, I can say the game is better when you’re not struggling against the rules of the game. And it wasn’t just using a different setting, but using 1-1 time, using higher order combat abstraction, using very large parties, etc. Trying to force your preferred mode of play on a game has become very natural to the hobbyist, because we’ve all played games like DnD, (not talking about Advanced here) Vampire, or Star Wars, that are in one way or another lacking a number of judicial pillars we’ve learned hold up successful campaigns. It all comes back to the life cycle of the gamer: you will either waste away fruitlessly or create a new game.
so fucking true. the continued observance of a “higher state” of play can only inculcate a desire to express that higher state in a permissive environment for those with the gift to write.