Defining the Terms

and how it helped improve my playing experience

A couple of weeks ago I started playing a new solo adventure trying out the Mythic Adventure crafter. I used it to create an interesting opening scene, picked a game, created a character and realized:

I don’t want to play this game.

Not because it’s bad but because certain aspects of the game are not that intriguing to me.

It got me thinking about a few things and I realized that the other games I owned weren’t that interesting either, for different reasons.

You know how people say your 20s are meant to help you figure things out?

It feels a little like that.

Figuring out what I want by defining a few things for myself and maybe for you as well.

Let’s start by looking at something classic because it will help built contrast:

Heroic

This is you D&D, Drawsteel, Daggerheart, Nimble, Pathfinder and so on.

These games exist to make your character or characters feel like heroes and grow more powerful with amazing abilities during the game.

It’s awesome to open the door to a room, cast shatter and defeat all 10 goblins that were standing in there (kudos to the druid in my D&D group)

Most of these games will focus on combat as a central element.

Maybe central isn’t the right word because obviously the story is being told regardless of combat.

Maybe I should say a defining element.

At least in the sense that it’s the thing that seperates it from other games that aren’t heroic.

When building encounters you get a formule like this:

Take X enemies of this rank with Y enemies of a lower rank with a Z:1 ratio per PC.

If you do that the encounter will be balanced, fair and fulfill the role of making your PCs feel heroic.

While it absolutely serves the purpose, I dislike it for soloplay.

It makes me dread it.

Whenever I envision an encounter I have to stop playing, look at the bestiary and built it out with a mathematical formula.

It also always implies defeating your enemies as a goal instead of something else.

Why?

Because I know I can.

Pulpy

I know there is a definition for Pulp Fiction somewhere.

Instead let me explain what I understand it to be:

A story about larger than life heroes.

Stories like Conan, Indiana Jones and maybe Star Wars?

Although Star Wars follows the traditional Heroes Journey to the letter.

Speaking of, how does it differ from heroic?

So far I have only ever played one game that is consideres pulpy:

Savage World Adventure Edition

The game uses a wild die (d6) alongside your regular ability die (d4 through d12) increasing your chance of success (on a 4+)

It’s a pretty cool idea because it accomplishes the core idea of the system.

Your characters are more likely to succeed in comparison to “regular” people or as the game calls them:

Extras.

Encounters don’t really need to be balanced either.

Any dice can explode and through the use of a wild die you have a high chance of succeeding if you take advantage of the tactical options the game provides.

In my opinion this hits some form of sweet spot between heroic and the next category:

Gritty

I could probably also just call it OSR because most games I know that fall under this category belong to the Old Scool Rennaissance.

But I think there is more to it.

Generally it means the world is dangerous and exists regardless of your character.

If you encounter a group of goblins its the same group whether you are level 1 or 5 and if you make dumb decisions or roll badly your characters can (potentially) die.

It also means that danger is usually telegraphed and it emphasizes player skill over character skill.

These things are also true for games like Call of Cthulu or Mothership which are not considered OSR (I don’t think).

Of course there are some major differences between these games and for example Kal-Arath but I think we can agree on the term gritty.

Potentially we could seperate it into OSR and Horror but I don’t want to split terms.

It comes down to this:

If you don’t know what a game is about, what it is intending to do, you can’t possibly understand the kind of experience you are getting while playing.

It is also important from the perspective of a soloplayer.

Each of these games have their own challenges.

While a game like Savage World might not need encounter balancing it still needs you to look at a bestiary, track wounds and abilities.

OSR and Horror games as well.

While the latter are usually simpler stat blocks and the encounters are faster (because they are more deadly) they come with their own challenge.

At least for me:

Telegraphing danger is difficult in soloplay.

When you roll up an encounter you know it’s there and it will always impact your decision making.

There are workarounds, I know.

I am mentioning these things not because they are impossible to play but because it leads to an important question:

What level of “inconvience” am I willing to put up with?

What is it I want out of my time playing?

Returning to Ironsworn

I bought, read and played a lot of games these last few weeks and months.

Not all of them with the true intention to play them but to understand their design and the philosophy behind them.

My decision was this:

I like narrative games.

While I was looking for something more tactical, something more “gamey” I realized that I didn’t want to put up with the inconveniences.

I can play Ironsworn as heroic or as gritty as I want (and other narrative games like Everspark or Legend in the Mist).

I like that it gets out of my way.

There were other factors playing into it.

I read a book about the philosophy of play which convinced me that it’s “gamey” enough.

I read Everspark by Cezar Capacle which talked about fictional positioning solving an issue I had with Ironsworn.

I found a way to combine the Mythic GME with Ironsworn (still testing) which hopefully solves another problem I encountered with the core game engine.

I will talk more about these things in upcoming posts.

Does that mean I won’t try other games?

No.

I recently bought The Broken Empire and Stonetop, both of which I am excited to try.

I still think solo wargames could be interesting as they might scratch that more tactical combat itch.

Generally, I think I have come to terms with the fact that there isn’t a perfect game for me.

There is only the level of inconvenience I am willing to put up with to play interesting stories.

I hope you found this helpfull.

Daniel

P.S. There are probably other types of games. Most of all cozy or slize of life that are worth mentioning.

Though that doesn’t change the point of this article.

I also didn’t talk about things like journaling games because I consider them narrative games with twist.

They can be cozy (Koriko), gritty/horror (wretched) or weird (Thousand Year Old Vampire).

I don’t think they can be pulpy or heroic because I do think combat is a defining element here (at least for heroic).