Historical Fidelity and Building Interesting Settings

For those that don't know me personally: I am a huge history/sociology buff. I majored in the latter during college, and I am (ostensibly) working on going back to get a master's in the former. 

I think there's a lot that can be learned from history. One maxim that I use frequently when describing why I love history: 'People have always been people.'. Looking at past human cultures can teach us much about the variances in our culture today. It can reveal implicit biases and prejudices that go back hundreds or thousands of years, and furthermore: give us a launchpad into imagining different worlds. 

Inkwarren is pretty heavily inspired by the folklore and culture of the British Isles during the Late Middle Ages. There's a couple reasons for this: it is the culture and history that I (Matt Shay) descend from, it is the basal inspiration behind many of the things that inspired Inkwarren itself, and despite medieval Europe being at the forefront of the majority of fantasy works, it's an era that many don't understand personally. I'm interested in what this society looked like, and what it would look like if it came from frogs and squirrels and sparrows instead of people (with a little bit of authorial liberty in there too). 

The majority of fantasy settings in major tabletop roleplaying games use a sort of setting I call 'Ren Faire Fantasy'. It has the loose trappings of a medieval/Renaissance Europe-- violins and plate armor exist in a world that sometimes has gunpowder and sometimes doesn't. The society itself largely reflects modern sensibilities: religion is a Percy Jackson-like monolatristic model (where the world is polytheistic but each worshipper picks a patron deity to pray to), the nobility melds with today's bourgeoisie and police forces exist in the form of city watches or town guards. This sort of setting is very, very fun, as it lets the player immediately make connections between what they know and what their character knows, without having to explain why some things are different. That's why you'll find it in every heavy hitter in the role-playing sphere: D&D, Pathfinder, Daggerheart, Draw Steel, and even smaller darlings like Grimwild use this model of setting. It is the most classic brand of setting available, and an easy one to market-- don't you want to play in the world you imagine at the Renaissance Festival?

However: I think history can be digestible. I'm not writing in this article about historical accuracy-- Inkwarren is not, in any sense, a historical fantasy setting. I think we can aim for a sort of historical fidelity-- using the societies of the past and today to create settings that feel like real, living, breathing cultures like the ones in our world. We can create settings that players can understand, settings that feel disparate from the world we live in, but that we can still connect with and explore as someone that lives there. I don't think the problem with Ren Faire fantasy is its lack of historical inspiration-- I just think it could be way more interesting with what it does with the history it's inspired by. 

How can we use history to create living, breathing, societies? Let's take a look at a couple of things:

1. Base and Superstructure. The Marxist framework for understanding how division of labor ripples into other pillars of society. By identifying the base of our culture's division of labor, we can form a superstructure around it to create systems of rule, repression, and class divide. 
2. Religion. Religion is a complicated phenomena in human interaction. The view that religion was mostly ancient people interpreting physical phenomena that they didn't understand is, I think, very limited. Religion is many things: it is a tool of control, a method of interaction, a repository for culture and history, as well as being a tool of understanding. Especially for medieval fantasy, understanding religion and how it works into a setting will be life or death for the setting's verisimilitude. 
3. Social Change. Don't write a fifty page bible of your setting's history-- if you don't burn out, your players will not read it. We're playing games here. We can create convincing histories by identifying three major moments of social change in our setting's history, and working through what has come from them. 

Remember these three rules as you design:

1. People are Not Stupid. Fantastical beliefs about the world, sciences that didn't work, or draconian social mores are not the product of an 'unintelligent' populace. Refrain from the impulse to play into tropes about historical peasantry: for the large part, people bathed, knew basic scientific truths about the world that we know today, and valued themselves and their community. This leads into rule two.
2. Examine Your Biases. This is an extension of rule #1. You did not learn an unbiased view of history. Accounts of marginalized and indigenous cultures were often written by their colonizers (especially so if they relied on an oral history). Tropes like human sacrifice, primality in culture and behavior, and brutality in regards to life or ritual are harmful and inaccurate to the actual cultures they were prescribed to. Be cognizant of this, and examine your biases where you can. 
3. In Everything, Be Material. People make decisions based on their material conditions. Things never 'just happen'. A bandit doesn't just rob people because he wants to be a bandit: he might be a cast-off mercenary from a war that's long ended, or an impoverished local preying on rich travelers, or someone abandoned that exerts their power on the world around them to reclaim that power within themselves. You'll not only avoid some of the worst impulses of fantasy world design with this, but also create more interesting dilemmas for your players to engage with. 
   

Base & Superstructure

Base & superstructure is a Marxist framework for understanding how labor relations shape a society. In short:

• The base is the fundamental divisions of labor that the society is organized around.
• The superstructure is the classes and surrounding annals of culture, organization, and oppression that arise from this relationship. 

In our current, post-industrial society, the fundamental division of labor is between proletariat (those who do not control their means of production and must sell their labor to survive) and the bourgeoisie (those who own the means of production and purchase the labor of the proletariat to sustain it). 

In a pre-capitalist society, these divisions of labor are different. A feudal system has the lower class (peasantry) work their means of production and supply their surplus labor to the ruling class. This is our base-- we can write it like this:

"The peasantry produces material goods through labor, and surplus labor is extracted by the ruling classes."

I say 'classes' here for a reason: the Late Middle Ages has a couple of distinct classes that have arisen from this base. I use four for most of Inkwarren's setting: peasantry, merchants, the Faith, and nobility, with 'outlaws' making up the fifth ur-class. Let's examine each of them:

• Peasantry. Peasants labor over the means of production to produce surplus goods for the ruling classes. Most peasantry work in agriculture: farms, domesticated animals, and the like. Some peasantry work as 'journeymen' (trainees) for more specialized laborers, falling under the merchant class. 
• Merchants. An emergent class between peasantry and nobility. At this time of history, coin is emerging as a standardization of transactions between classes-- we start seeing 'markets for exchange' for the first time in history. The true members of the merchant class are 'masters' or 'guild leaders' that oversee and control the labor of several journeymen (apprentices). They still give the surplus of their profit to the Faith and nobility in the form of tithes and taxes. Merchants will eventually absorb into the nobility and create the bourgeoisie of today.
• The Faith. Where merchants are an emerging class, the Faith is a decaying one. While still powerful during this period, the Faith used to be all-encompassing. It is still ubiquitous today, with athiestic movements being all but nonexistent. The Faith extracts surplus profit from the peasantry and merchants in the form of tithes. 
• The Nobility. The true ruling class of this period. Nobles own plots of land and extract surplus labor (taxes) from the peasants of that land. More powerful nobles have the ability to arbitrate law, impose sentences, or punish peasants that work their lands, or to extract more than surplus from them if they so will it. 
• Outlaws. The ur-class. Outlaws are comparable to Marx's description of the 'lumpenproletariat'-- they are members of the underclass that are wholly outside of the base and therefor unable to participate in the interactions of the superstructure. Outlaws are criminals, foreigners, exiles, or indigenous populations that lie outside of the setting's base and superstructure. 

Perfect. We have our base, and we have the workings of a superstructure. 

Creating Your Own

Create your own base and superstructure by going through these questions. 

1. The Base. How does the society orient itself around labor? Who works, and who rules? Are goods sold in markets for profit, or used in more subsistent structures? Is it a more equal or more unequal relationship?
2. The Superstructure. What classes emerge from this division of labor? What classes break these rules? How does the ruling class establish its legitimacy, and what in-between classes might arise?

Example: Inkwarren's Base and Superstructure

Base. In the Crowne of Inkwarren, the lands of the world are divided amongst family lines of nobilities-- called 'clans' or 'houses'. These family lines vary in power, but each controls a plot of land and extracts surplus value from the woodlanders who work it. 

Superstructure. There are five statures that a woodlander might fall into:

• Outlaws have been banished from, or perhaps were never a part of, Warrenish society. They do not work a trade and therefor cannot gain coin, and hold none of the privileges of the higher classes. They must seek other ways to survive-- which may include further treasonous acts. 
• Smallfolk are the largest stature in Inkwarren, and the weakest. Smallfolk all work in service to a houseborn family, and give that family the surplus of their labor in the form of a tax. They tithe another portion to the Abbey of Sant. 
• Tradesfolk. The tradesfolk are an emerging stature in Inkwarren-- trained laborers, most of whom belong to a guild. The highest of tradesfolk are the masters-- great artisans who are attended by one or more apprentices, the lowest of tradesfolk who arise from the smallfolk to train under guilded masters.
• The Faithful. The Abbey of Sant is the premier religion of the Crowne of Inkwarren, ruling it in centuries past. Now, the Abbey is a center of community, medicine, and learning for the smallfolk. Woodlanders receive treatment for their ailments, entertainment in the form of mummery and storytelling, and learning in the Santwrit (their holy book) and other matters of the world in exchange for tithes (small percentages) of their labor output. 
• The Houseborn. The houseborn are the highest ruling class of Inkwarren: those ancient families that rule large swathes of land and everyone that lives on it. Houseborn range in power: from the great House of Fane that rules this land, to smaller vassal houses that collect taxes from a precious few farms on their land. 

Religion

Religion is one of the major constants between almost every human society in history. In medieval life, religion was ubiquitous. Our counts of atheistic medieval movements are almost nonexistent-- those that we did know of were factions like the Cathars that simply had different ideas about how divinity works. (As a forewarning before the rest of this article: while I grew up deeply involved with Christianity, I am an atheist. I always strive to be objective with how I speak about religion, but if my tone is overly sterile I apologize.)

Again: this is not because people in the Middle Ages were stupid. People did not cling so hard to the Church and the thought of God because they did not understand the world around them. The church was the center of the peasant community-- it was one of the only major public gathering places, a community center for entertainment and learning, and for most of the peasantry, the only place to find medicine. Trained physicians (belonging to the merchant class) were few and far between, and they charged a comparable rate for their services. 

Also important to note here before I get into anything actionable: religion is not an objective term with a single meaning. It is a modern term, and not how people of past eras regarded their epistemology for the universe. I use the term religion here to mean 'a system of belief based upon the divine, spiritual, or mystical', and will discuss the term based on that assumption. 

Never mind answering the question of what is religion-- how does it form? How do we write one to be convincing?

Let's put together some assumptions:

1. Religion is Part of the Superstructure. Religion is part of the superstructure that we created before. In many examples, the priesthood is a remnant of a former ruling class, from an early time where the division of labor existed between citizenry (working) and clergy (ruling). Our first rule (choose whether yours will embody or break this): the Faith used to be in power, if it isn't still. 
2. The Divine Melds to the Mortal. Our perceptions of the divine often change based on how our society functions. Urban/metropolitan societies where many people exist alongside strangers they don't know often develop 'moral gods' that watch their actions and look and behave like people. Subsistent/nomadic societies based around smaller family groups often worship deities that act more like forces of nature. Our second rule is more broad: the Faith looks like the society that worships it. 
3. Religion Answers Questions. Alright, this is still a component of religion. It's just not the only component. A religion will answer questions and fill in the gaps of the known world. If it doesn't make statements on causal claims like the origin or death of the world, it will answer more philosophical claims: how do you be a good person? What's the purpose of life? What happens when you die? Here's our third rule: the Faith answers questions we don't know the answer to. 
4. Religion is Culture. The community gathers and feeds the needy at a holy place. Their special days are based on the Faith, intermixed with a few days based on major historical events. Many clergies will offer medicinal services without cost, and other events-- plays, feasts, weddings, funerals -- are hosted at the temple. The priesthood provides funerary services, and are available for advice or interpretation of the holy book if needed. Our fourth and final rule: the Faith acts as a cultural glue for the society. 

We have a basic, probably contradictory understanding for how religion works, basing our assumptions on medieval Christianity. If you seek something more unique to this setting, break one or all of these rules. Imagine a religious structure different from the one stated here!

Creating Your Own

To come up with your setting's religion, let's answer some questions. 

1. When was your religion born? How does it say it came into play? Do your setting's histories remember a time before the religion? If it can be remembered, what was the prophet of the religion like? How did it become what it is today?
2. How does your religion reflect your society? Does it worship personal, moralistic gods that judge the actions of the woodlanders? Only one god? Are gods forces of nature to be feared? If they have individual domains, what do they govern? Why are these domains important to your society?
3. What questions does it answer? Does it explain weather, age, or similar phenomena through mythology? What does it say about the origin of the world? Does it predict when the world will end? What happens after its followers die? What's the purpose of life?
4. How is your religion reflected in the setting's culture? What common practices have origins in the faith? What holy days do followers observe? Is there a gathering place, or a priesthood? What roles do priests fulfill? Is there a holy book? What cultural values find their origin in the faith?

Example: The Abbey of Sant

Inkwarren's premier religion is the Abbey of Sant, also simply called the Abbey or the Faith by its adherents. It is based around the writings of a holy text called the Santwrit. 

• When was your religion born? According to the Santwrit, its writings are the summary writings of the Four First Saints-- the Saint of Coins, Cups, Swords, and Wands, each with a shard of the primordial Den Mother upon her death. The coming of the Abbey to Inkwarren, if it was recorded, was lost with the destruction of the Folk of Yesterday-- but there are woodlanders who follow older gods that profess they have held the faith of their ancestors far longer than the Abbey has sung its tales.
• How does your religion reflect your society? The Saints are four pseudo-deities: woodlanders immortalized because of the import of their deeds in this world. Through following the examples of the Saints, woodlanders too can hope to achieve Sainthood and join them in What Comes After. The Abbey values stories and histories, and encourages woodlanders to build their own saga amongst their neighbors. Woodlanders pray to the Four Saints for different gifts: Coins for luck, Cups for health, Swords for strength, and Wands for wisdom, or any number of lesser saints for their patronage.
• What questions does it answer? The Santwrit professes that the world was born from the cleaved corpse of the Den Mother, after Her progeny the Child slew her in a vengeful rage. Woodlanders were born from Her tears, and the strange world of Yon was born of the Child's former home, and cleaved from his Mother's body. The Santwrit does not speak much of what comes after: woodlanders who have lived lives of virtue will join the Saints, and those unlucky few who lived forgotten or immoral will fade into nothing. It professes that the Wide World will come to an end when the Child reaches from Yon and burns the last of his mother's remains. 
• How is your religion reflected in the setting's culture? Woodlanders believe in three unforgivable sins: denying someone their last words, breaking an oath spoken aloud, and sorcery. There is a holy day for each Saint, each in a different season: for example, the Day of Swords is celebrated mid-autumn and forbids violence or bloodshed of any kind from sunrise to sunset. Gathering places are called Abbeys, attended by a striated priesthood: Abbots lead congregations and interpret the Santwrit, Harpers are itinerant priests that travel to settlements without an abbey of their own, Midwives learn the secrets of medicine and humors to care for those that come into their care, and Penitents atone for a great sin by embalming the dead and singing the final death song upon their passing: the drune. Priests never carry a blade-- it is forbidden. 

Social Change

History can be defined by periods of social change. Social change is the transfer of power from one class to another. Wars, revolutions, religious enlightenments: all of these can shape your setting. We are not going to write a long history here: sum up the history of your setting with three instances of social change that are still shaping the world today. 

Moments of social change are used to illustrate the ever-shifting nature of society. Your society's base and superstructure are likely not how they have always been-- faults in the system, hunger pangs of the working class, and inequalities in division of labor will eventually lead to an upheaval. 

History moves in waves. It has peaks where the progressive force of change wins, and valleys where the forces of reaction crush it. Consider this when you build these moments: sandwich a progressive change with two reactionary ones, or vice versa. Progressive changes trend towards equality: smashing class barriers, allowing mobility, or weakening the power of the ruling class. Reactionary changes trend towards inequality: victories of the ruling class allow them to tighten their grip, misfortune prevents the working class from organizing, or a new base presents itself without abolishing the inequalities of the old one. 

Consider also the age of these changes: if all happened within the lifetime of the setting, your characters would be entering into an era filled with chaos and strife. More than likely, some of these happened lifetimes ago: but you can still feel their effects in the world today. Here's my advice: place one event within a lifetime, one several lifetimes ago, and one too many years ago to count. 

Creating Your Own

To create a moment of social change, let's consider the following:

1. The Transfer of Power. Who was power transferred from, and who was it taken from? Was this a progressive, or a reactionary transfer? Was the transfer physically violent, or rely on methods that did not use bloodshed (note: this can still mean violence)?
2. When Did It Happen? A lifetime ago, and the eldest of folk can still remember it. Many lifetimes ago, passed down through story? Or did it happen in times immemorial, and all that we have now is myth and folklore?
3. How Are the Effects Felt? Where are the ripples felt in your setting? What is different in the world since it happened? Is there ever any hope of going back? 

Example: Inkwarren's History

Inkwarren's history is defined by three major instances of social changes. 

1. The End of Yesterday. Many lifetimes ago, the civilization whose ruins now dot Cairnadal's face disappeared. They left no histories and no survivors-- all that is left of them now are ruins built from mossy stones and relics of a time immemorial. Inkwarren's history before this point was lost-- entire cultures, religions, and histories vanished into darkness. Scholars call this the End of Yesterday, and study of the civilization-- now called the Folk of Yesterday, pervades Warrenish scholastics.
2. The War of the Willows. Several lifetimes ago, the kings of northern Cairnadal (now called Inkwarren) united their armies to push their age-old enemy, the people of Wyld-Ma, away from their borders. Together, the armies pushed the Wyldmari back to the very edges of the great lake of Eashym, and have occupied the land they took ever since. The borderlands between the descendants of this conflict are called the Marches of Pryd, and many believe that the Wyldmari will one day venture to take it back. 
3. The Torchbearer's Rebellion. A lifetime ago, a mere twelve autumns, several houses of the disparate kingdoms of north Cairnadal rose up in rebellion against their kings, under the leadership of House Mourne. Together, this alliance overthrew and ended the lines of each of the kingdoms of Welkinbranch, the Root Roads, Pryd, and Cradlewick, and took control of the kingdom. They took an old name for the north of Cairnadal, from when folk called it 'the Inkwarren', for their new kingdom. Now, the Crowne of Inkwarren rules all of northern Cairnadal, joined in Cairnadal by only one other kingdom-- Wyld-Ma, of the marshy shores in the far south.

Closing Thoughts

With these steps, we've created a working society for our playspace. We know how the society is structured, some details about the culture, and the broad strokes of its history. We have enough to begin preparing our first session. 

In the next post, I'll prepare a session of Inkwarren! Join me then!

Thanks for reading! :)

Hollow Knight, Disco Elysium, and Creating Engaging Exploration

 I recently finished my first playthrough of Disco Elysium (striking while the iron is hot). At the risk of sounding too original: what a game. Disco is really really phenomenal about creating a world that feels like a real, living tapestry of history in just a couple of unique locations. Every location you visit is awash with little details, characters spanning the game's unique sense of comedy and tragedy, and history. Like, real, tangible history. 

Disco very easily earned its place in my top games of all time, joining the likes of Hollow Knight and Dishonored in the ‘I will happily replay this again and again’ stage. Each of these games has something in common that they each approach very differently: a world that is fun to explore. 

When designing Inkwarren's procedures for exploring the world of Cairnadal, I want to evoke some of the same emotions that these games give me with their mechanics. But I am not a team of video game level designers, and neither will the Voice in the Dark be for any Inkwarren game down the line.

What makes the exploration in these games work? How do we translate it to a game?

Before I break it down, let's break our terms for game design into three categories:

• Rules. The text of the game. Emotions or feelings that we can evoke through text and mechanic. 
• Procedures. Soft advice for how to run the game. Malleable. Guides for creating the theatre of the game world that can be modified or tweaked per table. 
• Maxims. General ideas. Things to remember. Not a codified rule, but a goal to be ascribed to. 

Spoilers for both games ahead, but I'll try to keep them light.

Hollow Knight: Hints & Mortality

Hollow Knight is, and has been for years, my favorite game of all time. I have played through the game 3 or 4 times, and its sequel Silksong twice. It's really special. 

Hollow Knight thrusts you into the bug-sized world of Hallownest through the eyes of its nameless player character-- most community sources call them the Knight. The Knight is small, cute, and voiceless-- a blank tapestry perfect for projecting the player's consciousness onto them. 

I think the exploration of Hollow Knight feels like it does because of two maxims: it never answers questions where a hint will suffice, and never goes easy on you as a player. 

Hints

Hollow Knight never answers a question where a hint will do. Throughout the game, you will find ruined statues, inscriptions with cryptic meanings, and many, many carcasses of dead bugs that hint at some sort of past catastrophe that turned Hallownest on its head. As you follow the road across the first several areas of the game, this sense of melancholic finality culminates in the beautiful City of Tears-- a vast, large area where it constantly rains and you get to see the zombified soldiers of Hallownest performing their rote responsibilities for eternity. 

Hollow Knight manages to be melancholic through much of its gameplay, only transforming to tragedy once you put together enough of the tapestry to understand what really happened to Hallownest. Everywhere else, the sadness of the setting is tinged with your own lack of understanding of what happened. For most of the game, you don't get to know all of the details: the surroundings impress upon you that you are traveling through the ruins of a once-great civilization, and now they're gone. That's all you get to know.

Mortality

The Knight is among the weakest things in Hallownest. At the start of your game, you'll find vengeflies that lazily buzz towards you or husks that run to you in a predictable fashion, practically begging you to test out your Nail on them. Eventually, you will run into an enemy that kicks your ass. It might be a mini-boss, like the early game Gruzz Mother, or a boss like the False Knight. Later on into the game, even standard wandering enemies will be enough to make you halt and travel cautiously. 

Because the game is so difficult, exploring becomes a ration of caution and effect. You are encouraged to explore carefully-- around every corner could be a new enemy or a new area that forces you to react, not act, and learn how to bypass them. At the same time, you are encouraged to push forward-- at a certain point in the game, any path could be the path you need to move forward. If they don't progress the story, unexplored paths could offer shortcuts, benches (places to rest and regain health), or rewards that will make exploring easier down the line.

You are encouraged to be daring, but encouraged to be cautious as well. This encouragement comes with the simple fact that you are weak, and your enemies are strong. It works well.

What do we learn from Hollow Knight? 

Let's take a rule, a procedure, and a maxim from the game.

  
Rule: Searching. Inkwarren's core 'challenge draw' mechanic does not cover any action relating to establishing knowledge. If you want to know something, you have to ask your Voice: whether that would be searching a dark room, telling if someone is lying, or establishing what your woodlander might know about a subject. The Voice assigns a level to the answer you seek (common, obscure, or arcane), and then looks at your character's relevant Knacks (skills). 

Depending on what your character knows and is good at, you'll get one of three replies: a truthful answer, a hint in the right direction, or no answer at all. Each provides you with information you can use to move forward. However, first: you have to ask the question. 

Procedure: Skirmishes & Battles. Inkwarren's Battle system is something I'm very proud of, but it's not made to be pulled out for every conflict woodlanders might face. Battles are for pitched, dramatic confrontations-- like a boss fight. If the woodlanders are fighting someone who might not match them in skill, drama, or simply time, they 'skirmish', using a simple procedure of challenge draws and hits to resolve the fight. This ensures that when the battle map is pulled out, it's an event. It's something to lock in for. Every fight is made to be challenging. Woodlanders must choose carefully when and where they wish to draw their blades. 

Maxim: Questions. Never answer a question that hasn't been asked, and never tell the players something their characters can't observe. That's my advice for the Voice. Make your woodlanders think about how they will explore an area, or what they will do to find the answers they seek.

Waxing Poetic About Game Design

Hi guys. :) In between articles for now, as I work on refining Inkwarren's core systems for the final ashcan. I'll probably write an article soon on my thoughts for the Battle subsystem, as well as one for a side project I'm working on called The Savannah Project. 

I went on a hike with some friends earlier in the afternoon yesterday. I've been playing TTRPGs with them since early college (and each of them still plays Inkwarren with me weekly to this day), and one of them mentioned that while he still enjoys TTRPGs, they don't hold the same "hyperfixation" quality that they did for him when we first met. Now-- they are just a hobby that he enjoys, like board games. 

Obviously, that's healthy. I still love games. I love game design. When I interact with art or people or the world I've always got mechanics on my mind. Why is that?

I have always loved humanity. I majored in sociology in college, and while the job market there continues to whither, I still loved my core classes. I love history. I love linguistics. In many ways, art is an intersection of both (as many things are). Art is equal parts communication and expression. It is both an expression of the internal self and a communication with those who view it. Games are much of the same thing. 

I once read, and I've long forgotten where, that TTRPGs are "board games where a shared imagined space is a central component". We're playing a board game, but we're also playing pretend. Different game designers will wax poetic about the intent of mechanics (and I am by no means seasoned in this regard), but my two cents: game mechanics are communication. A game mechanic joins the collective understandings of each player with the rules of the world they are playing in-- that's the magic for me. 

Designing a game mechanic is an invigorating activity of coming up with answers to questions like: 'How do I engender a feeling through a rule?'. How do I make a player feel like they are swinging a sword? Like their life is in danger? Like they've lost a friend? What do I want the game to feel like, and how do I translate that?

When people talk about truly genius game mechanics, they often reference how effectively those game mechanics engender an emotion-- sometimes, that emotion is joy! It's fun! The ever-popular Dungeons and Dragons does this well through its arguably most famous mechanic: the Natural 20 (even if the actual mechanics of the natural 20 are mostly down to table culture). For most tables, a Natural 20 means 'you do something awesome'. It's a 5% chance, and when it happens, the entire table gives a collective 'no fucking way' and waits for you or the GM to describe the badasssery that takes place. Even outside of dedicated TTRPG spheres, the phrase 'natural 20' has become almost synonymous with 'to do something awesome'. This is a great mechanic. (Don't make me praise 5e anymore). 

Another excellent, oft-mentioned mechanic is the core resolution of the horror game Dread. Dread uses a Jenga tower in its game play. When your character does something risky, you pull a block from the tower. If it falls, your character exits the narrative. Pulling a Jenga block is already an anxiety-inducing procedure. Assigning the life of your player character to it adds yet another dimension of finality that does what the mechanic intends to: it makes you feel dread. 

If you want a mechanic to be exciting, give it a low random chance with a great effect when it triggers. If you want a mechanic to be scary, give the same chance for severe consequences. If you want your characters to think about things like crossing rivers or buying horses or moving unseen, you must create a game that cares about those things. 

To say nothing of designing them, the most enticing part of design is the social dimension of games (with the exception of solo TTRPGs, of which there are many fantastic options). Every rule I design can't be just for me-- I have to think about how other people might translate it in their heads. After I get a rule that works on paper, I have to test it out to see if it actually works for communicating intent to the average player. Sometimes I hit. Most of the time, I miss, and the puzzle begins anew. 

There is nothing else like this in the world. 

Currently, the Battle mechanics in Inkwarren are not working. There's too many moving parts, the players and I forget rules, and most of all: it's just too easy for the players to win. I'm trying to engender a feeling of necessary teamwork into every Battle, and the current mechanics aren't hitting. I have a playtest next week with some new rules to try out. It's the most fun I've ever had with a hobby, ever. 

Why do I love TTRPGs? 

My partner loves putting together clues and solving mysteries. My other friend loves using his wits to solve problems. Yet another friend loves quiet moments and long, personal conversations. I love politics and history and intrigue. This Friday, we will sit down around a table together, and I'll open up a Google Doc on my computer. I'll turn on some mood music, turn down the lights, and ask them for a thumbs up if they're ready to go. 

Then, we'll use some rules I wrote, and all of us will tell a story together. 

The Life of Inkwarren, Thus Far

Three years ago, I had an idea absolutely no one had ever had in the history of communication. 

I was going to make a tabletop-roleplaying game. 

I shared this idea with many other people after Wizards of the Coast, the parent company to Dungeons & Dragons and by far the loudest voice in the space tried rolling out changes to their Open Gaming License in early 2023. They later backed off of these changes, but the damage for a lot of people, including myself, was done. (Truth be told, I was wrapping up a year-long 5e campaign that I GMed, and I was pretty sick of the system at that point). 

I was going to make a game. I had no idea whatsoever where to start. Before I get into that, an aside:

Heyyyyyyyyyyyy. I'm Matt Shay! I'm a game designer based out of Atlanta, Georgia. Today I'm going to be writing about my system, Inkwarren!

Infancy: Gnosis

When I started designing Inkwarren, I had a vague idea of what I wanted out of it. I have a particular taste in fantasy that was never really scratched by traditional elfgames like Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder. I wanted a game in which:

• Magic and monsters were mysterious and folkloric.
• Medieval political intrigue could stand alongside more classical, danger-filled adventures.
• Combat was fluid, impactful, and suspenseful. 
  

In my first drafts of the system, I was calling it Gnosis. I conceived of a dice system inspired by Fantasy Flight Games' Genesys dice, a couple of bespoke fantasy races, and some class concepts, and more or less wrote and rewrote this for several weeks. I was doing most of this straight into Affinity Publisher, which meant that even small edits would require redoing pages of work. Never again. 

Gnosis had a system called the Torch that would gradually ramp up tension through Flickers as the game went on. Eventually, the Torch would go out-- I conceived of this like a Darkness Zone from Destiny-- harder encounters, deadlier consequences, and the climax of the session. 

I kept running into the same problem: a lack of identity for the system. Gnosis was fine, but did little to really stand out from other fantasy games out there. I needed a theme to build around-- an elevator pitch that couldn't just be accomplished by a setting book for one of the larger elfgames.

Around this time, I got really into a lovely board game called Root. Root is a wargame with a similar ethos to games like Risk or Smallworld, but centered around factions of woodland animals in a large, medieval-ish Woodland. It's a delightful game that I still play almost weekly with my friends-- every faction plays differently, different board or card setups can entirely change a game, and table-talk and table-politics are central to victory in an average Root game. I digress-- Root gave me an idea.

Also around this time, I had been officially dating my partner, Beck, for around a year. Beck is a huge fan of Dimension 20, and while hanging out in my tiny college apartment we watched through all of A Crown of Candy, their spoof on A Game of Thrones shunted into a Candyland type setting. I was really struck-- and inspired -- by how authentic the drama of the Intrepid Heroes' game felt, despite a setting that would normally run counter to that kind of drama. I thought about it a lot. I thought about Root a lot. 

Suddenly, I had my elevator pitch.

Adolescence: Game of Thrones with Squirrels

I started really getting into the meat of the game once I had the elevator pitch. "Game of Thrones with Squirrels." A game set in a fantasy woodland with woodland animals populating it-- low-fantasy, points-of-light, scary wilderness, weird magick, the works.

The first iteration of this game was called Ruin and Rue, and I had my first playtest for it in January of 2024. I made some simple sheets and brought together my first group of playtesters for a simple adventure. It went great. It was messy. The system was essentially Pathfinder 2e warmed over at that point. 

It felt special, though. It felt like my game. 

I playtested about once or twice a month for the next year. The game started to get more of an identity around it. I nailed down my core resolution pretty early on, which is still present in the game, with a metaresource called Hope (now called Courage in Inkwarren's current form.) When you failed a roll, you would become filled with Hope. Later, if you failed another roll, you could spend your Hope to get a partial success. This was a good loop to me, and I've stuck by it across a lot of different iterations of the system. It avoided the fiddly numbers of a more Powered by the Apocalypse approach, but allowed an escape from a binary pass/fail system.

I think two things are really important for digging into and learning an art form-- I think an artist has to be in community with their art, and I think they have to love their art (low bar, I know. And yet!). If you truly want to develop yourself artistically, it's important to experience art-- and let others experience, critique, and talk about your art. For game design, this means reading games, talking to other designers, and playtesting. I got really into that. 

It's been a joy to become involved online with the online game design circles on Bluesky (and formerly, Twitter). I've gotten really into reading articles and blog posts (like this one) about games, or game design. I subscribed to the Patreon for MCDM throughout their process of making the game now called Draw Steel, and was continually inspired. I read lots of games, and lots of games ended up inspiring and being drawn from for Inkwarren (as a non-exhaustive list of highlights: Heart: The City Beneath, D&D 4th Edition, Break!!, Mythic Bastionland, The One Ring, Modiphius's Dishonored, City of Mist). 

One game, however, really made a mark on Inkwarren. His Majesty the Worm, by Josh McCrowell. His Majesty the Worm is a terrific dungeon crawler that uses tarot cards as the core randomizer, and the game bleeds a low, weird fantasy vibe that's perfect for my tastes. Once I read about the tarot randomizer, and even more so when the game released, I was hooked. 

Young Adulthood: Tarotwarren

After reading His Majesty, I had a lot of back-and-forth over whether or not I should upend the system to implement a tarot randomizer. I was really in love with the idea. Tarot gave a pretty endless set of dimensions for randomization with a single set of tools, had thematic weight as well as mechanical weight, and pretty seamlessly worked with a lot of the ideas that I had for the system already. 

Many of my friends, however, served as a counterweight. I had already been working on Inkwarren for two years, centered around dice. The current 2d10 iteration was working well, and had been for several playtests in a row. I shouldn't just throw that all away to redesign the system from scratch.

I ended up redesigning the system from scratch. I took a month to write out some rules. I got my friends together for a playtest, and nicknamed the draft Tarotwarren. It's one of the best decisions I've ever made.

That first playtest was electric. Don't get me wrong-- it was sloppy. Combat fell apart. The rules were confusing or too complicated in areas. But the palpable feeling amongst myself and the players after the test was 'This is really cool. There's something here.'

I have been iterating and improving on Inkwarren every since. For every mechanical idea that worked as well as tarot at the table, I've had two more that bombed during play. I was really down about a combat mechanic that I wrote up-- a dynamic rock-paper-scissors system that mixed Heavy, Light, and Rife attacks against Blocks, Dodges, and Counters. It is, to this day, the worst-reviewed mechanic that I've ever brought to table. Yet, it was a lesson. This is why we playtest. 

Other mechanics fell in casualty to playtesting: an Alignment mechanic to sociopolitical powers, several iterations of a 'Character Traits with Mechanical Weight' mechanic, an Upper Hand/super abilities system, and more that I'm sure I've forgotten. A lot of playtesting was throwing ideas at the table and seeing what would stick. 

Eventually, a system started to take shape-- enough of one that one of my friends asked me when I was going to run a full campaign in the system. After all, mechanics like progression, session-to-session abilities, and character building hadn't been tested yet. 

This was around Christmas of 2025. "I don't know," I told him. 

"How about January?"

Adulthood: Inkwarren Zero Edition

Tonight, as of writing this, I am running the 17th session in our campaign. The party is currently exploring the central region of Middle Cradlewick in a hexcrawl-style play mode, after being driven out of their capital city of Gwynt in a coup by a rival noble house. They are traveling with several members of the Lich, a fungal unitary mind that, while peaceful and polite, has made clear its intent to grow and spread if the party allies with it. 

This campaign has been a lot of work. My other campaigns in 5e and Pathfinder have had online tools and programs, books and Reddit threads of advice, and years of experience in each system. If I had a question, I could crack open a rulebook or look online for the answer. When the campaign is your own system, you are the search engine. Very often I have to say, "I don't know, I haven't designed it." and ad-hoc an explanation. Often, if the improv works, that becomes the new rule. If it doesn't, I sit down and brainstorm on how it should work. I have to make character sheets, patch rules that don't work, and work on overhauls (like I am now) in my free time between sessions.

Despite how much work it is, it is the most rewarding campaign I've ever run. I can't express how freeing worldbuilding is when you aren't constrained by mechanics written by someone else. The system has really come into its own identity after some time playing every week, to boot. Inkwarren is now solidly a game about exploring and interacting with a haunted woodland world filled with intrigue, danger, and competing factions at every turn. Woodlanders are weak on their own, but strong as a group. They must find and build relationships, make hard choices, and record Memories as they play. The progression system allows woodlanders to decide whether they wish to invest in their prowess in Battle or Venture (the two main modes of play), and gives them a look back at the important moments each session that made their woodlander who they are. 

The system feels 'almost done' for the first time in its process. I have all of the core rules in the doc. Now comes character options, formatting, editing, etc. I hope to have the doc up on Itch by late summer/early autumn. 

The Elevator Pitch

I am so very excited to introduce everyone to Inkwarren: Zero Edition!

Inkwarren is a low-fantasy tabletop roleplaying game centered around woodland animal-folk exploring a vast, haunted world. In Inkwarren, your adventuring band of woodlanders will balance time and consequences exploring the world, building and growing Bonds with the characters inside of it, and resolving the threats that face your kingdom before it is too late. Inkwarren offers:

• A tarot-charged game engine that uses the Minor Arcana for challenges and combat and the Major Arcana for esoteric evocations of the whims of fate.
• An exploration-focused Venture mode of play that ticks up tension until danger presents itself.
• A gridless, turnless Battle mode of play that prioritizes fluid, dramatic tactical combat.
• Deep woodlander creation rules that balance descriptive storytelling mechanics with more traditional tactical abilities. Play any animal you would like with the freeform, descriptive Folk rules, and use unique, flavor-filled Traditions like the Knave, Astrologer, Sellsword, and Medicant to further distinguish your woodlander.
• In a low-magic setting, there are no wizards or sorcerers amongst the player characters-- find a tutor in witchcraft, train in it, and master the Song of the Witch to master magick during play.
• Low-prep tools for the Voice in the Dark (the Game Master) to prepare sessions, regions, and factions to interact with. 

The vast woodland of Cairnadal awaits you! Create your band, and wander!

If Inkwarren sounds like something you'd be interested in, keep an eye on this blog. I'll be updating with design diaries, sneak peeks, and setting information in the coming weeks!