Have you ever thought about changing up your system expectations?
Over the years, this column has evolved from altering your game to ideas about gameplay itself and different modes of play, to my thoughts on the state of the hobby and where we should be driving as GMs. But I was having a discussion with my partners the other day about hacking systems and how I’d prefer to find a new system that works than hack an existing on out of recognition and they simultaneously brought up that I used to hack games more; some people might not be in a financial position to afford different systems and I realised that I have let myself get a little comfortable. I’m currently running a lot of games, and while the content is deep and often pushes people to new places, from a set-up perspective, I’m not challenging myself.
And I cast my mind back to the moments I’ve been most happy in the last six months while GMing and noticed those were the times I was pushing myself to do new things. Not necessarily new systems, but really changing what I was doing and adding variety in.
The games I’ve really enjoyed are ones in which system has given me a toolbox to play with and push. It became crystal clear recently, after a game based in our 80’s cartoon-inspired D&D world featured a multi-level hoverspeeder chase-fight with multiple opponents separated by hundreds of feet, moving hundreds of feet a round.
The chase was exciting to me in a way D&D hadn’t been in a while, and I realised – I’m not fed up of D&D, I’m just getting bored of my own ease with it. When I clanked out all the stops, introduced hovercraft, had a fight taking with like five new bolted-on artifacts and effects and dipping between two battle sites, I was having the most fun. I needed to crank the mechanics up to eleven and see what they could actually handle. So I’m now thinking about RPGs in a whole new way. How can I create something new with the components I have?
And I guess that on some level, that’s what I’m always looking for – a robust system I can use to represent the game world that I can push to breaking point if I need to. Why is this important? Well, I think we ought to look at what we can do to challenge ourselves and change some of our expectations.
While I’m going to deep dive this concept and go back to some my previous articles and look at previous ideas I had and where we can create different play experiences, let’s look at right now at how we can quickly alter the dynamic to challenge ourselves as GMs and create wholly new expectations. Let’s look at some tools I’m using.
Change Basic Assumptions But Sparingly: In a D&D game I am currently running, some characters have just found one of several worlds locked away from the multiverse, sealed from them. It stands to reason that these worlds are going to have very different universal rules. So I’ve purposefully altered the rules of the world they are visiting: Divine magick straight up doesn’t work, each of them has a sanity statistic and they don’t know it yet, but the rest of the mechanics here are much harsher. I’m challenging myself to make this still interesting to the players who have labelled this place ‘arkham world’ after being here for like five seconds.
While I’m not attempting to run a Cthulhu game in D&D, I’m borrowing both thematic and mechanical elements in order to bring something new. Upsetting the players’ mechanical expectations makes this place feel really odd and new and exciting for all of us.
I already have ideas for other worlds they might encounter that are actually more heroic or work on a basis of karmic honour that they might encounter. Each new world they might find is going to have some mini-element to consider. But I’m doing this to create something new for myself and the players. I’m not going to keep it like this forever. Just little dips in order to push the envelope of what we are doing.
It’s important to just upend expectations within the system occasionally. I love the game Vaesen because just killing the thing that is causing problems is almost never the answer. Most of these things just come back within a week if you do that and a lot of them can absorb massive amounts of damage. This is the game that made mermaids terrifying. There’s something wonderful about that change of the standard expectations of a game with monsters in it, just presenting a threat you have to deal with a completely different way.
Similarly, I like the impact using an empowered hunter has in Vampire: The Masquerade because it upends the predator assumption in the game – suddenly, the humans of the setting are unpredictable and might be able to fight back. Players get surprised when we mess with stuff inside the existing mechanical restrictions. Give that insect hive titan queen you’ve been thinking of an armour class of 100. For a moment, the players are going to panic when they realise they just can’t hit it – until they work out it has a +0 dex save.
Change The Way You Play: Often meet in person? Run a game online that is all a horror game based in a Zoom meeting. Online a lot? Have a big dinner and play with people. If you’ve got a big group but only one person can show up, don’t cancel – instead run a flashback or side story one-shot for the people who did turn up that highlights one event in setting. Move the stuff of your playspace around, play in a field. Seriously playing outside, even just in the garden, is a whole different experience.
By moving this experience around, you’re pushing the envelope you have without moving too far outside the comfort zone. It’s great to keep a variety of experiences like this to keep your brain engaged.
Change What You Are Using To Play: Pick up some adventure from a game you don’t normally an just straight up convert that adventure and see what happens. Run Curse Of Strahd as a Cthulhu By Gaslight Game. Take Feng Shui’s Burning Dragon and set it in the Forgotten Realms. Take the Kult adventure Black Madonna and combine it with the Twilight 2000 adventure also called Black Madonna and see what happens. Those other game influences will create an interesting hybrid of ideas.
I realise as I get to the end of this article that this might just be me working through my ADHD brain, so how much you find these ideas desirable might depend on your level of neurospice. I think it might be helpful to everyone looking to offer new ideas and learn something. Because of that, next time I’m going to compile and reoffer the best ideas for changing up your games in interesting ways that I have mentioned before in a clear and summarised format. So that you can find and use them to re-examine new frameworks for your existing set-up.
Creative Commons license: Dan200129’s Dino vs Alien Poster, dragonxboy55’s Siren head and KoReTheDreamer’s Sad Moon.
