How Did My 2015 RPG Predictions Pan Out?

- Roleplaying games will become more popular. I've got no real way of knowing this, but it does seem that the hype of D&D 5e has settled down. I haven't seen D&D penetrating other pop culture like movies or TV, but maybe I'm just missing it.

- Wizards of the Coast will announce the sale of 5e PDFs late in the year. There was the free PDF player's guide to Princes of the Apocalypse, but none of the 5e print products have been released in PDF.

- WotC won't release very many new D&D books but there will be a new Forgotten Realms setting book and it will be praised for being the best version of the Realms yet. There were very few releases from WotC this year, but one of them was a Forgotten Realms setting book. However, this book has been panned by anyone I've seen actually read it.

- No official D&D electronic tools. Really? I whole fucking year without a character builder? I wanted to be wrong about this one. They've outsourced the virtual tabletop to Fantasy Grounds, but I don't think that counts.

- Likewise, Project Morningstar will non-existent by the end of the year. The Kickstarter campaign failed and I can't find any actual news about the project, so I think it's safe to call it dead.

- There will be a lot of A Red & Pleasant Land hacks, but the best one will be A Red & Pleasant World. To be honest, I'm a little let down at how little has been done with R&PL. I'm also at fault here, having read only 50 or so pages in before being distracted by something else shiny. I was hoping that I would put together A Red and Perfect World, but I fell out of love with the Apocalypse Engine some time in the spring.

- Lamentations of the Flame Princess will release (almost) all of the many miscellaneous adventures from all those crowd-funding projects. Probably all at once along with the Referee Book. I was very wrong about this. I think there was one or two PDF releases. Here's hoping the best for next year!

- The RPG clique war will be quiet for most of the year. There won't be any major controversies. More and more people learn to co-exist. It really was mostly quiet. Drama would flair up when events provoked the most volatile characters, like Zak laying waste to the Ennie awards, but people didn't just start shit for the sake of being fuckards and I liked that.

- The line between storygames and D&D will blur to the point of irrelevance. Eh. Not really? I was expecting a lot of weird experimental D&D stuff this year and I don't think it really happened.

- Fantasy Flight announces a new Warhammer Fantasy Role Play edition that will marry the older editions with the current 40k RPGs. Nope and now I don't think it will ever happen.

- Troll Lord will run eight different Kickstarter campaigns. Troll Lord had a total of five Kickstarter campaigns launched in 2015, which is way more than I was honestly expecting. I was being sarcastic with this prediction but Troll Lord loved them some crowdfunding. I think it's worth noting that the final campaign was canceled due to slow funding. It seems to me that Troll Lord has been loosing a lot of steam due to their reliance on crowdfunding and the number of projects they promote through it. Kickstarter has basically become their business model. While I think that Troll Lord does a decent enough job with their products, their big Castles and Crusades campaign from 2014 is still not completely fulfilled and in the time from the launch of the campaign until now, C&C has gone from my favorite version of D&D to a game that has completely lost my interest.

- The inevitable Unknown Armies 3e Kickstarter will be a huge success. Things get really crazy while post-modern conspiracy and chaos magick becomes the flavor of the month. No kickstarter and really not much word on this project for a while. I've heard some of names associated with the third edition and now I really could not care less if this ever comes out.

- There will be another huge Reaper Kickstarter. It's a massive success but somehow puts Reaper out of business. No one gets their Bones 2 packages as a result. Reapers Bones III. My sarcastic conditions of Reaper going out of business and people not getting their packages didn't pan out

- DC Heroes will see a resurgence in popularity. Not sure what I was thinking with this one.

The Charm Monster ENnies Voting Guide 2015 Edition

The Judges

For the most part, the voting in of ENnies judges is like a popularity contest, except I'm sure more of us don't know who the fuck most of these people are.  Allow me to help and point out who should be popular and why:

• Kiel Cheiner runs the awesome blog Dungeons and Donuts and has already proven he's good at reviewing and discerning excellent material. 
• Harald Wagener is someone I've seen around on G+ and seems like a generally cool guy.

One thing you might want to keep in mind is who the incumbent judges are. This is good in case you want more controversies about unlicensed fan hacks becoming Product of the Year. The incumbents are:

• Jakub Nowosad
• Kayra Keri Kupcu
• Stacy Muth
• Kurt Wiegel
• Honorable Mention: Hooper, who had been a judge until 2014. 

Seriously, if you want the ENnies to regain some dignity, don't re-elect these people.

Onto the fun stuff! Here are my picks for products in the various categories. 

• Best Adventure: Red and Pleasant Land. Hands down the best product to come out this year. It should win every category it was nominated for and also some it wasn't. 
• Best Aid/Accessory: DungeonMorph Dice: Explorer Set. These dice are a super cool way to make random dungeons.
• Best Art, Interior: Interface Zero or D&D Monster Manual. 
• Best Art, Cover: Mutant: Year Zero. Look them all up yourself, but I think that Mutant is a step above the rest. 
• Best Blog: Contessa. An excellent blog about women in gaming.
• Best Cartography: Ninth World Guidebook. I'm a bit ignorant on this category, but I have seen samples from Ninth World Guidebook and they were gorgious. 
• Best Electronic Book: Basic Rules for D&D. Could use some more art, but the content of the text (the best new game for free) makes up for that.
• Best Family Game: Doctor Who Adventures in Space and Time. This game needs more love. It's a solid game and would be accessible for younger gamers.
• Best Free Product: Basic Rules for D&D. See above.
• Best Game: D&D Player's Handbook. It might seem strange voting for the big name over the underdogs, but D&D 5e is a seriously good game. The best I've seen published this year.
• Best Miniature: Pathfinder Pawns. I like cardboard minis like this. We should encourage their creation.
• Best Monster/Adversary: D&D Monster Manual. Great art, great selection of monsters and the format of the entries are all excellent. 
• Best Podcast: Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff. It's Kenneth Hite and Robin Laws talking about stuff, usually interesting stuff. Obviously the best podcast possible.
• Best Production Values: Red and Pleasant Land, but since it wasn't nominated, Horror on the Orient Express is a good alternative. 
• Best RPG Related Product: Chicks Dig Gaming.
• Best Rules: D&D Player's Handbook. See above.
• Best Setting: Red and Pleasant Land. See above.
• Best Supplement: D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide. The best DMG I've seen for D&D yet. 
• Best Software: Fuck if I know. I live in the distant past. 
• Best Writing: Red and Pleasant Land. See above.
• Best Website: Age of Ravens. Lowell's histories of RPGs are the bomb. 
• Fans’ Choice for Best Publisher: Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Goodman Games both had amazing years.
• Product of the Year: Red and Pleasant Land. Without a doubt, this is the defining product of 2015. It should become the gold standard of RPG books. 

An Unlicensed Fan-Hack Has Been Nominated for Three ENnies.

The nominees for the 2015 ENnies Awards have been posted and I can't say that I'm surprised by many of the names appearing. D&D 5e appears in several categories and will likely win all of them. Zak Smith's A Red and Pleasant Land has four nominations and should win all of them.

But one very surprising nominee is the Mass Effect FATE game. "What Mass Effect game?" you might ask, not recalling the release of a game using such a hugely popular property. You wouldn't have remembered this huge release because it didn't happen. The Mass Effect game that hold three ENnies nominations is an unlicensed fan hack. 

I have no problems with people taking one cool thing and finding a way to make it work at the game table. I especially like it when they make it nice and polished and then give it away for free. (And of course they have to give it away because they don't own the property.) This DIY spirit is what makes RPGs such a fun hobby. But one of the most prestigious awards in the industry is not the place for fan hacks, even the best of them. 

The Mass Effect FATE RPG has been nominated for Best Free Product, Best Electronic Product, and (in what can only be seen as a slap in the face to anyone working with original IP) Product of the Year. For every one of those nominations, a wholly original or officially licenced game was excluded.

This is a low point for the ENnies. My past gripes with the award have been that the nominated products have been boring or substandard, but this is something else altogether. Nominating the hack for an award legitimizes it as a "real RPG product," which it certainly is not. It should never have been submitted for consideration and the judges should definitely have removed it from the running. But there it is, possibly about to become the defining RPG product of 2015. 

Best case scenario, the hack will go unnoticed by the voting public and the ENnies will enact stricter submission guidelines. Worst case, the creator of the hack will get a C&D letter from Electronic Arts and the ENnies will loose all credibility from here on out.

UPDATE: The ENnies have done the right thing and disqualified the Mass Effect game. The game has also been removed from its own site, which make me think that the author is either having a tantrum or has been contacted by owners of the Mass Effect IP.

My Gaming Resolutions for 2015

This last year, 2014, was a good year for me when it came to reading and talking about RPGs. D&D 5e came out, which got me excited for the future of the hobby. A bunch of creative people put out very creative books and my RPG collection has ballooned. I had many great conversations with people online about games. I even got to meet some of those people in real life once I figured out I practically live down the street from them.

Unfortunately, 2014 wasn't a very good read for actually playing games. I managed to run a few games at home, but way too many of them were clusterfucks with way too many players and not enough focus. I did run my very first convention game at Game Con South Bend and that was an extremely positive experience. Although I missed Gen Con, the small local convention exceeded my expectations and I had a lot of fun.

2015 is going to be a year about playing and running games. My goal is to play in at least 26 games this year, which is roughly one game per two weeks. I think this is a manageable goal, but to be honest, 26 doesn't seem like enough games. I suppose there will never be enough.

I also want to make a big dent in the number of unused books on my bookshelf. Below are the following games I want to run or play in the next year, including the modules and supplements I want to use.

• Dungeon Crawl Classics
• The Chained Coffin
• Peril on the Purple Planet
• Lamentations of the Flame Princess
• A Red & Pleasant Land
• No Salvation for Witches
• Qelong
• Scenic Dunnsmouth
• Death Frost Doom (provided anyone who was in my first edition run-though isn't present)
• Dungeon World
• Narcosa (probably in Dungeon Crawl Classics)
• Wild Talents
• Primogenitor 
• Monsters and Other Childish Things
• Unknown Armies
• Warhammer Fantasy Role Play, Third Edition
• Into the Odd
• Our Last Best Hope
• DC Heroes
• Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space

Focusing on this long list will also help me focus on my third goal, which is to not spend any of my salary on hobby materials. This still means I can spend some bonus money, gifts and commission cash on games, but it also means I have to be very intentional with my spending. I was a little liberal with my purchases in 2014, and while this did not cause any financial hardship, it did result in a fair amount of frustration and limited mental bandwidth.  

This probably means I won't be going to Gen Con this year, but I think I'll be able to swing some smaller, local cons and hopefully play in this years Anti-Gen Con on Google Plus.

Here's to 2015.  This last year was a great year for tabletop gaming but I'm sure we can make this year even better. 

My Predictions for the RPG World in 2015

- Roleplaying games in general will see an uptick in popularity as more and more TV shows have D&D episodes and Wil Wheaton's RPG YouTube show starts. They will especially grow more popular among women.

- Wizards of the Coast will announce the sale of 5e PDFs late in the year. The prices will frustrate anyone who has already purchased the physical books.

- WotC won't release very many new D&D books but there will be a new Forgotten Realms setting book and it will be praised for being the best version of the Realms yet.

- No official D&D electronic tools.

- Likewise, Project Morningstar will non-existent by the end of the year.

- There will be a lot of A Red & Pleasant Land hacks, but the best one will be A Red & Pleasant World.

- Lamentations of the Flame Princess will release (almost) all of the many miscellaneous adventures from all those crowd-funding projects. Probably all at once along with the Referee Book.

- The RPG clique war will be quiet for most of the year. There won't be any major controversies. More and more people learn to co-exist.

- The line between storygames and D&D will blur to the point of irrelevance.

- Fantasy Flight announces a new Warhammer Fantasy Role Play edition that will marry the older editions with the current 40k RPGs.

- Troll Lord will run eight different Kickstarter campaigns.

- The inevitable Unknown Armies 3e Kickstarter will be a huge success. Things get really crazy while post-modern conspiracy and chaos magick becomes the flavor of the month.

- There will be another huge Reaper Kickstarter. It's a massive success but somehow puts Reaper out of business. No one gets their Bones 2 packages as a result.

- DC Heroes will see a resurgence in popularity.

My Predictions for the D&D 5e Licencing Scheme

Everyone is still in a tizzy in speculation over how Wizards of the Coast are going to approach third-party licencing for Fifth Edition products and the non-commital answers from Mike Mearls in a recent Reddit AMA only added fuel to the fire. The OGL of 3rd edition produced a flood of products, some of which were actually pretty good. The more restrictive GSL of 4th edition produced almost nothing. I think a lot of people are hoping for something akin to the OGL so that they can start working on products for 5th edition, which is fun to write for, but I think that WotC is going to go into a different direction, one that is both more and less restrictive.

First, I predict that there will not be an open licence. You will not be able to put a page of legal text in your PDF and release a product for D&D. Any product that is explicitly for 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons will need to be officially licensed, such as Goodman Game's recent Fifth Edition Fantasy adventures.

However, this is not to say that the little guy is going to be cut out of making and even selling 5e content. I expect WotC to be very picky about who they send cease and desist letters to, in an effort to keep people interested in the newest edition of D&D. Going after your most passionate fans is not a good way to grow a brand.

I think it will all come down to whether a third-party, unlicensed product hurts or helps WotC sell copies of books. Adventures, new classes, new monsters and new rules options are more likely to drive up demand for the core books and therefor put more money in WotC's pockets.  On the other hand, a website that practically regurgitates the spell descriptions from the Player's Handbook only deters people from purchasing the physical product. A full-featured character creator app may prevent people from buying the PHB, but a random character generator based on the free Basic D&D text isn't taking any revenue away from WotC.

I'm optimistic about the future of third-party D&D products. I think WotC will embrace the DIY nature of tabletop RPGs while not being explicit about it. This may suck for anyone hoping to slap a D&D logo on their modules, but for the most part this will be a good time to be a D&D fan.

The Deal with Zak S

Update, February 10, 2019: Back when I wrote this post in 2014, I was convinced that Zak was an upstanding guy and the victim of an extensive harassment campaign. Now that Mandy Morbid, Zak's longtime girlfriend, has come forward with her account of abuse at the hands of Zak, I see the truth. Zak is not just some aggressive game designer with a bad attitude. He is cruel and abusive and I no longer support him.

Horrifying likeness by Matthew Adams

Zak S is not homophobic. He is not transphobic. He is not ableist. He is not racist. He is not a misogynist. He can be aggressive and occasionally immature with that aggression. Any claims that he is anything other than the occasional jerk are unsubstantiated and in some cases completely fabricated. No evidence has arisen of Zak's bigotry. These claims or libelous, hateful and petty.

And here's the real deal: Zak S has no power over you, your life or your enjoyment of the gaming hobby. 

Zak has been a controversial figure in the RPG world for a long as I can remember. He's passionate about the RPG hobby and has formed strong opinions that he will defend with the white-hot heat of Hell. He's the sort of guy who believes in universal truths in gaming and will call you out if you disagree with his universal truths. I found this out when I once +1'd a statement about level drain that he didn't like.

He also defends against any attacks to his friends and loved ones. Be an asshole to these people and he will likely call you a pigfucker. He will be relentless and will sometimes go a far as tag your Google Plus account to a post.

Because of this behavior, Zak has hurt plenty of people's feeling, but it needs to be stressed that these attacks on feelings have had nothing to do with sexuality, gender, race, ability or anything else other than opinions of games and personal attacks. Some of the people that Zak have made uncomfortable have been minorities, but that is irrelevant to whatever Zak may have said. Insulting someone who is transsexual is not the same as insulting someone for being transsexual. The distinction needs to be made.

The only time I can recall Zak making a questionable statement regarding transsexualism is when he called himself a "Grognard morphodite" in a Something Awful thread. He didn't know what the word "morphodite" meant and was using context cues from the film Stand By Me. The word sounds like a weird sort of monster, like a troglodyte, but turns out it is a dated derogatory synonym for "hermaphrodite." A transsexual member of the SA forum took offense and Zak defended his use of the word before eventually apologizing (repeatedly) for his ignorance and any offense. The apology was accepted. I stress that Zak not only admitted he was wrong but that the slur was directed to himself, not another person.

This is the only instance I've seen of Zak being insensitive to non-cisgendered people.If you know of a specific instance of any other offense, please let me know and provide a link or screenshot to the evidence. Thus far no one else has been able to.

Without being able to point to specific evidence of his bigotry, Zak's enemies have resorted to mental acrobatics to accuse him of toxicity. Below is an exchange Zak had on Twitter in which he is accused of forcing people to never play RPGs again because he did not publicly come out against the douchebaggery of unnamed others.

Click to make readable.

You cannot accuse someone of endorsing a behavior because they do not publicly denounce it. If that were the case, we would all be guilty of endorsing the most heinous acts because we don't actively say "No, sir, I don't like it."

All of this has come to a head because Zak is a credited consultant on the newest edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Mike Mearls, the big boss of D&D, publicly asked for any evidence of the bigotry of any of the consultants. None was found. The only complaints were of hurt feelings and vague accusations of harassment. As a result, Mearls has taken no action to publicly denounce his choice in consultants.

Ironically, the best source I know of regarding Mearl's reaction to the Zak controversy is in an anti-Zak post on the site Fail Forward. This article performs the incredible task of attacking Zak while offering no evidence and acknowledging that there is no evidence. This is not how you form an argument. It is, however, how you spread lies.

There must be proof if any accusation is to taken seriously. This is the basis of any legitimate legal system and it applies to petty matters in roleplaying games.

I am writing this, not to the people to hate or support Zak, but to the people who don't know who Zak Smith is but have heard some weird things and want to investigate. Thank you for reading this far and I hope you now understand that you don't need to worry about that Zak guy who's name appears in your copy of D&D. I hope that this has calmed any concerns you have and I hope you come to this simple conclusion regarding your enjoyment of roleplaying:

ZAK S DOESN'T MATTER.

Zak, nor any other abrasive personality on the internet, cannot keep you from loving roleplaying games. He can't "force you out of the hobby." He cannot influence the way you play your game. Not unless you let him. If his words ever hurt your feelings, rest assured that your feelings will heal and you can move on. This applies to any other person on the internet, on either side of any position, anonymous or named. The only person who has any real power over how you have fun is you.

I'd like to end this by saying that I like Zak. I think he's a brilliant DM and I'm so glad he shares his creations on his blog. I cannot think of any other blogger who has influenced the way I run D&D and I'm glad for it. One time I posted on G+ about how the guy playing Superman in a convention game of DC Heroes was a jerk and sullied my fun. Zak was the only person who talked to me about it and I honestly felt better afterwards, talking about it like to grown-up gamemasters. He's a cool guy.

Zak earned his spot on the list of D&D consultants. He may be a jerk now and then, but who isn't? It doesn't even matter because D&D 5e edition is awesome and we can all have a lot of fun with it.

Let's just have fun.

My Uninformed Opinion on the 2014 Ennie Award Nominees.

The nominees for the 2014 ENnies awards have been posted and I don't know what 90% of this stuff is. Was I completely out of the loop in 2013? I feel like that was probably my most attentive year regarding mainstream RPGs. Looking over the lists, I'd think I was in a coma for the entire year if it weren't for the release of Shadowrun 5e and Razor Coast.

However, having a pathetically inadequate knowledge of something has never prevented me from forming an opinion about it. Here are my picks for the 2014 Ennies.

Best Adventure: Trail of Cthulhu: Eternal Lies. Haven't read it. Could have if the ToC Bundle of Holding was more successful. I'm still bitter about that. Regardless, it's a campaign for Trail of Cthulhu, which makes it pretty awesome.

Best Aid/Accessory: Noteboard. The only accessory on the list that looks actually usable for most GMs. 

For all that is holy, please don't vote for the Fate Eldritch Dice. They are just fudge dice and they don't even have the best color scheme of all the dice set that Evil Hat made.

Best Art, Interior: Numenera. I don't know much about this game, but I've been consistently impressed with all the artwork associated with it. Shadows of Esteren is a close second.

Best Art, Cover: Razor Coast. Honestly, none of these are great covers. Busy art with a million characters throwing magic missiles does not impress me. That shark guy is probably the only cool thing in this category.

Best Blog: Illuminerdy. The only nominated blog I remember visiting in the past year. I don't remember what brought me there but I enjoyed the stay. 

Best Cartography: Qelong. I don't know shit about the maps in any of the nominated books. I do know what Jez Gordon was robbed for his amazing work in Qelong.

Best Electronic Book: Faerie Tales from Unlit Shores: Prince Charming, Reanimator. This is the only book on this list that I even recognize. As such, I assume it's the only one that made any impression on games as a whole. 

Best Family Game: Camp Myth: The RPG. It takes place at a summer camp for mythological beings. From what I've heard from podcasts, the system is pretty dandy too.

Best Free Product: Super Powers Companion Villain Supplement. It's about 15 pages of stats and write ups for generic supervillains for Savage Worlds. It doesn't attempt to sell you anything. Is pure function. (By the way, quickstart rules should be banned.)

Best Game: Pass. The only one I have read on this list is Fate Core. Consider this a unvote for Fate.

Best Miniatures Products: Whisper & Venom Collector's Set. This must have been a rough year for minis or mini producers just don't care about the Ennies. Still, the minis in the Whisper & Venom set are very cool and instantly made me regret not getting in on the Kickstarter.

Best Monster/Adversary: Creature Decks. I saw these at Gen Con and had a hard time passing them up. Monsters are made to be on cards.

Best Podcast: Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff. I can't believe I was so slow to actually listen to this podcast. It's Ken Hite and Robin Laws talking about various things that are always relevant to my interests. What more can you ask for?

Best Production Values: Whisper & Venom Collector's Set. Seriously impressive for an independent publisher.

Best RPG-Related Product: Strange Tales of the Century. Seems to be the only usable product in this list. I don't understand RPG soundtracks as they seem like more trouble than they are worth at the table. And that card game definitely shouldn't have counted. 

Best Rules: Pass. Like "Best Game," I didn't read most of these books. The only one I did read is Fate Core. While they seem like pretty good rules on the surface, most of the chatter I hear about the game is people not understanding how to actually run the game. That's not the sign of a good rule set.

Best Setting: Numenera. Sci-fi high fantasy is something we needed this last year. 

Best Supplement: M&M: Power Profiles. Seems like many of the books in this category are companion pieces to very recently published games. Sort of seems like the stuff that should be included in the core books. The Power Profile books isn't that, so that's why I like it more than the others.

Best Software: Old School Monsters Database. There needs to be more good RPG apps for Android and this seems like a step in the right direction. 

I did kickstart Wild Card Creator and the software shows a lot of promise. Unfortunately, the last time I used the program it was buggy and missed key features that prevented it from being at all usable. It's an ambitious piece of software that is maintained by just one guy.

Best Writing: Doctor Who RPG: The Third Doctor Sourcebook. Haven't read it, but if it stands up to the standards of the other Doctor Who game books, this it a good one.

Best Website: See Page XX. Why are most of these sites so fucking ugly? See Page XX has tolerable design and is usable at the table. Tabletop Audio seems cool for people who use music at the table.

Product of the Year: Fuck if I know. My hunch tells me that Fate Core will get it as they made a huge splash with it and people are still riding the high that comes with vague, theoretically malleable rules. I suppose I'm rooting for tremulus, which appears to be the dark horse candidate.

By the way, I've nominated myself as a judge for the 2015 ENnie Awards. Please vote for me. I can't make promises, but I would do my best to keep a card game from getting nominated for anything.

What I see when I think Drow

I've never used the Drow before in a game, but I think that will be coming to an end soon. There is something appealing about a sneaky, subterranean race that is completely, irredeemably evil and aren't mindless hulking monsters.

The main reason why I've avoided the Drow has been their infamous skin tone. While I acknowledge that there is an implication in having the skin of super-evil and ruthless villain race be dark, I have a less noble reason for not liking their jet-black skin. I think it's stupid.

I realize that the black skin of the Drow is supposed to come from some sort of curse or corruption from worshiping a goddess who is no good for them, but it's not nearly as creepy as the natural skin tone of a truly subterranean race: pure white. Not only does this make more biological scene (especially to players who are not well-versed in D&D lore) but I think it also makes them much more frightning and otherworldly.

Below are some examples of what goes through my head when I think of the Drow.

God, those are some creepy, pale badasses.

In researching evil albinos I came across a D&D supplement for a race called the Shadow Elves. From what I can tell, they are a watered-down Drow with white skin and hair. At least someone at TSR toyed with the idea of truly subterranean elves, but without the ingrained evil, the Shadow Elves lack a lot of the sex appeal of the Drow.

My Biggest Gaming Hate: Codified Roleplaying

I, like most other committed GMs, are on a constant search for The Perfect Game, that one game that has the perfect set of rules for our play style. Unfortunately, it seems that no such game exists. So while the hunt for the Perfect Game, seems to be ultimately fruitless, it does have the added benefit of honing our sense of what we like and what we don't like in a game.

Recently I have come to identify one common element that I hate above all others: codified roleplaying.

I hate games that tell you how to play a character and are built upon mechanisms that don't work unless someone plays the character "right."  The reason I think this sucks is that rather than naturally flowing with the story and reacting like a real person, the player must remove themselves from the scene to analysis how the character would best approach the situation. If she's playing a game in which there is a mechanical reward for "good" roleplaying, there is a potential for analysis paralysis as she considers the best way to game the system with her character's next action or dialogue.

There are a lot of games out there that are based around codified roleplaying, and there seems to be more and more every day as the story games become more popular. The earliest example of codified roleplaying is likely the nine alignments of AD&D, but now there are games like Fate Core that are almost nothing but rules on how to play a character "right."

I want very much to like Fate Core. It has a lot going for it and truth be told it's quite a brilliant game. If I were to every run a setting that is completely unlike anything published with concepts like superpowers or time travel that are hard to nail down, I'd probably turn to Fate. Since the character is composed of descriptive Aspects defined by the player, they would have a great idea of what a character can or can't do. The rules are also very simple, which is something I love as a GM.

But then I think about how a game of Fate Core would actually play out. Because the rules mimic conventions in fiction, it seems to me that Fate is more about playing a narrative device than a character. When you define a character with tropes, its just the tropes that you're going to be playing with. On the other hand, most traditional games have characters that are defined by characteristics directly related to actions. When the dice are thrown, it's in regard to how successful the character is in performing an action, not whether or not the invoked trope will work out in the narrative.

Savage Worlds probably has the most about of codified roleplaying that I can handle as most of the Hindrances offer no explicit mechanical benefit. The underlying mechanism is that when a Bloodthirsty character kills the already subdued enemy, he gets a benny. The problem I have with this as a GM is that I have a terrible time keeping track of roleplaying Hindrances and don't reward them when I should. A player would likely need to look me in the eye and say, "I am killing him because my character is Bloodthirsty." Talk about breaking the scene.

In my Perfect Game there would be no rules that dictate how a character should be played. Evil characters are such because of the actions the player takes, not because of what is on the character sheet. Likewise, charming characters are not so because they have that trait on their sheet, but because their players make them so at the table.

It can be argued that codifying character personality and social skills allows people to play characters that are dramatically different than they are in real life. The awkward loser can play a dashing knight and the shy wallflower can play an intimidating thug. My solution to this problem, rather than ruining fun with codified roleplaying, is for the GM to give the players a fucking break. If someone is trying to be smooth in my game, I let that play out, even if the truth is far from the fiction. If someone is trying to bully an NPC and that character has given them good reason to be afraid, that NPC will be shaking in his boots.

I believe that roleplaying is something that you just end up doing in an RPG. It doesn't need to be force onto a player, nor should the GM have to enforce "correct" roleplaying. When that dungeon door opens and a giant poisonous caterpillar spills out, the most natural reaction will always be the best.