I feel like I’ve been saying this a lot, but…

I’m rounding out this shitty-ass month with some self-torture. I’m answering reader-submitted questions.

If you want to submit your own dumbass question for future self-tortu… a future Ask Angry Mailbag column… e-mail it to ask.angry@angry.games. Remember to grant me explicit permission to call you whatever I’m to call you, to get to the point, and to keep it brief.

By the way, when I say “keep it brief,” I don’t mean, “keep it brief until you get to a question mark and then tack on a paragraph or three of extra background context that, ‘I don’t have to read but which might clarify your question’ or whatever.” I mean that if I glance at your e-mail in a preview window and see more lines of text than I feel like reading, I ain’t even going to get to that question mark.

I’m talking to you, Jacky!

Rob asks…

Do you have any suggestions for keeping the fantasy in worldbuilding? I feel like I need to put so much effort into plausible ecologies and economies and understand how things work (for fear my players would pick up inconsistencies), only to discover that I’ve removed all the magic from the world.

Do I have any suggestions for you, Rob? Why yes, Rob, I do have a suggestion. What you’re doing? The thing you think might be causing your problem?

STOP! DOING! IT!

I ain’t even gonna talk about the whole fantastical worldbuilding thing. You’ve got a way bigger problem than your inability to make magical worlds. And that problem is your inability to solve your own problem. And I’d be doing you — and everyone else — dirty if I didn’t address it. Because you’re so frigging close to doing this right.

You have identified a problem. You clearly put thought into what might be causing the problem. You even identified a potential cause. Hell, you recognized a possibly irrational motivation that might be driving you to do the thing you think might be causing the problem. You got as far as creating an actual, working hypothesis. A totally reasonable, rational one. If only there was some way to easily test that hypothesis. If only there was some simple thing you could do — or stop doing — that would help you determine if you maybe have the solution right in front of you.

Here’s your homework: fix your own damned problem. I don’t say that often. Because most people can’t even get as far as articulating their problems. You can. Clearly. And you can analyze your problems. So, test your hypothesis. Run the experiment. For the next couple of months — at least five full sessions — stop worrying about ecologies and economies and see what happens. Does your world feel better? More fantastic? And do your players notice that your world’s sociopolitical and ecological spheres have gone bonkers?

This is part of being a Game Master. Tinkering and tweaking when you ain’t happy with how your game feels to see how you can make it feel better. It’s a vital skill. And it takes courage. But it gets easier after you do it a few times and find that your game doesn’t completely implode.

The power… is yours!

Timmy asks…

I had a question about Freeform play, playing with as little rules as possible. Everyone has fun playing in my games, but the fun eventually feels like modding a video game until it is no longer fun. I enjoy one-shots and short campaigns, but I feel like Freeform is cursed to stay that way when I want epic campaigns. Is there a way to break this curse in Freeform? Or do I just have to accept this aspect of Freeform?

You ain’t gonna like this answer. Lots of you won’t. And I’m gonna make it worse by starting with some very heavy sarcasm. People don’t like sarcasm — at least when they’re on the receiving end — but it’s often the best way to get a point across. Provided you don’t care about hurting people’s feelings. And I don’t.

So, Timmy… let me get this straight… you have this game that promises grand, sweeping, epic adventures, right? And you took that game and you stripped out most — or all — of the rules. And now the game isn’t delivering the grand, sweeping, epic adventures it promised. Is that right? That’s so strange. What could possibly have gone wrong? Why might the game not work as advertised? And is there anything you could do differently that might fix the problem? I’m just totally stumped here! I’m baffled! This makes no sense!

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF MY FINGERS?!

All right… that’s the heavy sarcasm out of the way. Now, let me explain what’s actually going on here. Which is more complicated than it seems. And this part’s where I go from mere sarcastic asshole to offensively toxic community gatekeeper shitlord. Just promise you’ll read the whole thing before you tar and feather. There’s no judgment or malice here. Just some basic facts.

Freeform roleplaying isn’t gaming.

Hey, hey, hey… get back here. And get away from the comment form. Hear me out before you decide I’m a monster. This ain’t the insult you think it is.

Games affect the human brain in certain, specific, psychological ways that other activities just don’t. Playing a game is different from watching a movie or telling a story or sewing a quilt. And if you hook your brain up to a fancy and expensive scanner, you can see the difference.

I am not saying it’s wrong to tell stories or sew quilts or watch movies or anything else. Do whatever you want to do for fun. But none of those activities will do, for your brain, what playing a game does. And if you want your brain to have the game-playing feeling, you have to play a game. You can’t sew a quilt or tell a story and expect it to feel like a game.

That’s where I’m coming from when I say freeform roleplaying isn’t gaming. I’m not saying you’re having fun wrong or that you shouldn’t be doing it or that you’re ruining gaming for everyone. Those are ridiculous things to say. I’m just saying freeform roleplaying doesn’t feel like gaming because you’re not playing a game.

There are lots of theories about why games do what they do for the brain. And there are lots of theories about what makes games games. Trust me. My supporter Discord community loves to argue about every last one of them. They’ll take any excuse to fight over the proper, technical definition of game. They don’t care that it’s a dumbass discussion to have because there isn’t a proper, technical definition of game. There are just activities that affect brains a certain way and attempts to figure out the common elements among them so we can make more of them.

That’s what it means, by the way, to say a definition is descriptive and not prescriptive. The definition is an attempt to describe a phenomenon, not an attempt to set criteria.

Anyway…

The barest-bones description of game that seems to work is “a voluntary activity with a goal, one or more challenges to overcome, and rules that define and constrain what the players can do.” In other words, a game needs goals, challenges, and rules. At minimum. There are a thousand academic papers about what else you have to layer on top of that crap for it to count.

Freeform roleplaying activities — the way most people engage in them — just don’t fit the bill. In most cases, they lack defined, in-game goals like Defeat Strahd or Rescue the Princess from the Dragon or Accumulate Treasure, Experience, and Levels. Instead, most freeform roleplaying activities involve the participants reacting to whatever happens and improvising their way through their characters’ lives.

Further, freeform roleplaying activities — as you noted — tend to be extremely light on rules and constraints. And, as such, they really can’t present challenges to the players. The characters in most freeform roleplaying activities do face — and overcome — conflicts, but the players are generally telling stories about how the characters overcome the conflicts instead of challenging themselves to overcome the conflicts with their characters’ abilities. Telling a story about how your character killed a dragon is fun, but it’s not the same as using the rules and your characters’ abilities to kill a dragon.

The goals, obstacles, and rules together add context, challenge, and constraint. And it’s those three elements in particular make the gameplay experience feel meaningful. And certain, specific reward pathways in the human brain are triggered by the combination of those elements in particular.

This ain’t to say games can’t also tell stories. That’s not the point. But one reason why games attract people in ways that other media don’t is because games provide very rich mixtures of different intrinsic psychological rewards. Writing a story can satisfy your desire for creative expression. Watching a movie can satisfy your need to experience a well-told narrative. Shooting the shit with your friends can satisfy your need for fellowship. But playing an open-ended roleplaying game with your friends about heroes overcoming challenges on a great quest can do all of those things at the same time and also satisfy your desire to test yourself against challenges and discover an unknown world and lots of other shit too.

And the whole experience, psychologically, is greater than the sum of the parts.

Freeform roleplaying hits certain aspects of the gameplay experience, but it also strips some away. And the ones it strips away are fundamental to a meaningful and rewarding gameplay experience. Goals, rules, and constraints, in particular, are vital elements to infusing choices with meaning.

All of that’s probably why your freeform roleplaying experiences are losing their luster over time. They’re fun experiences, but they lack the elements that make gameplay experiences feel meaningful and satisfying in the long term. Honestly, I recommend you just try playing a tabletop roleplaying game as intended for a few months. It’ll take some adjustment — you and your friends might feel constrained or even frustrated at first — but after a while, you might discover it delivers a surprisingly rich and satisfying experience.

Of course, I might just be an asshole gatekeeper using a bunch of psychobabble to keep the wrong kinds of people — you and your friends — from ruining my hobby.

There’s only one way to find out.

Magnus asks…

Should a player be allowed to impose a check or save on themselves to determine how well their character handles a certain situation?

No!

I can’t believe anyone would ask me that. Not at this point. Are you new here? Did someone put you up to this? Is this a dare? Am I being punked?

Players do not determine the outcomes of their characters’ actions. Players describe the actions they want their characters to attempt. The Game Master then determines the outcome of the action and describes it. If the Game Master needs a die roll to determine the outcome, they’ll ask for one. Or they’ll just roll it. Otherwise, they’ll simply describe the outcome. And if it’s important to know how well a character handles a situation, the Game Master will determine and describe that as well.

This is pretty much the most fundamental thing in roleplaying gaming. If you don’t get this, you can’t run — or play — roleplaying games. Some players do have a problem grokking this. That’s why I suggest that Game Masters keep a metal yardstick — or for those of you in backward, uncivilized corners of the globe, a metrestick — at hand. If a player picks up a die without you asking them to, slap them with the yardstick hard enough to make them drop the die. On a second offense, you can use the edge of the yardstick. On a third offense, you make them eat the die.

As a side benefit, this also stops the fuckwits who roll dice to see what their character chooses to do.

Jacky asks…

Do you play with any encumbrance rules or do you just use common sense to restrict the amount of shit your party can carry? (End of question, skip the rest if you want 🙂 I’m a new DM. I tried to impose encumbrance rules (5e btw).. but my players whined and complained because math and so here’s my long, boring story about that because I just can’t stop typing even though I’m just pissing and moaning and saying the same shit over and over and even though you’ve said a thousand times to keep these e-mails brief and even though I already asked a perfectly clear question. I’m just going to keep yammering and tippity-typing away and wasting your time and everyone else’s with word after word and this isn’t actually what Jacky wrote, this is just what it sounded like in my head as I read every last worthless, stupid, useless word.

First, Jacky, let me be absolutely clear: the only reason I’m answering this bullshit is to pad my word count. Which is apparently how you write e-mails too. The difference is that my words are interesting, entertaining things people actually want to read.

Yes. Yes, I do use encumbrance rules. Thanks for asking.

Damn it! Still not enough to fill out my arbitrary minimum word count.

Okay… let me address the real problem here. The one buried in all that bullshit you couldn’t stop yourself from crapping out. And if that doesn’t get me to the end, I’ll expound on why encumbrance is such a thing.

Let me ask you this, Jacky…

If your players complained about tracking hit points, say, or rolling dice to determine their actions’ outcomes, would that shit send you into the same sort of mental crisis spiral? Would you be asking yourself whether it’s better to just use common sense to decide when an injury is enough to kill someone? Would you consider ignoring the whole Damage and Healing section in the rules? Would you send some internet asshole three hundred words that amount to, “Whatever shall I do?”

No! You wouldn’t! You’d say, “That’s how the game works; suck it up, buttercups!” Just like every other Game Master reading this shit. So what is it about Encumbrance — or Ammo Tracking — that does this to all y’all? Why is Encumbrance somehow more optional than any other rule in the book? Why is it even a debate? Is Encumbrance really the one part of the game you think the designers got wrong? Because have you seen Dungeons & Dragons? It’s not exactly bursting at the seams with good design decisions.

That said, you, Jacky, did hit the nail on the head in all your extraneous verbal spew. Encumbrance is kind of a pain in the ass. You noted somewhere in your Giant Paragraph o’ Bullshit that your players hated adjusting the Encumbrance math whenever they picked up or dropped or spent every last random piece of junk and you hated reminding them to do it. It isn’t just that you didn’t like their whining, it’s also that you didn’t want to be bothered either.

And that’s the problem.

I do use Encumbrance, but I’m only picky about it some of the time. I’m not sure my players have even noticed, but I only ask about Encumbrance at the start of treks and adventures. Basically, I only make a thing of it when the party’s in town and between adventures. If, during an adventure, the party finds something heavy or unwieldy — like three urns full of silver coins or an adamantine greathammer — I do ask them to explain how they’re transporting that shit. And that usually leads to a few minutes of rigging drag litters or juggling gear between packs or burying treasure to return for later.

I’m running AD&D 2E — the best edition — right now. In that engine, Encumbrance is finicky and unforgiving. It’s already caused the party lots of problems. It’s slowed them down while they tried to beat an evil cultist-assassin to his target and it’s impeded their ability to carry enough food and water into drought-starved badlands and shit like that. It also made it hard for them to get urns of silver coins back to civilization. And that’s when Encumbrance is at its best: when it creates a problem to solve or a choice to make.

Encumbrance is at its absolute worst when the game has to stop so everyone can do a bunch of math only to discover they’re all still fine and nothing has changed.

I really can’t blame Game Masters — or players — for hating Encumbrance. It’s not that it doesn’t add to the experience; it’s just that it rarely adds enough to be worth the minutiae. It’s the very definition of a Kludge System. It’s way too complex for what it adds.

Encumbrance is poorly implemented in Dungeons & Dragons. Hell, it sucks in most tabletop roleplaying games. In D&D 5E, it’s really clear the designers threw it in because, well, “It’s Encumbrance; you gotta have Encumbrance,” but they also never wanted it to be an issue so they downplayed it to the point where it never affects anything. So, you might as well just dump it.

That said, letting your players whine their way out of rules they don’t like sets a bad precedent. Given that, I recommend that you not only keep Encumbrance but that you strictly enforce it. Once the players give up the fight and stop whining, you can quietly let it fade into obscurity. But let your players know you’re the boss first.

Meanwhile, I’d like to say that I don’t think tracking Encumbrance is actually the big problem. Yeah, it’s a pain in the ass and it’s what everyone focuses on when they try to build their own, better Encumbrance system, and it definitely needs rethinking, but the much bigger issue is

Oh! I just noticed I hit my arbitrary minimum word count. So I’m just gonna end this here. Thanks for the question, Jacky.

You know what’s funny though? If I hadn’t burnt through a few hundred words making fun of your inability to respect a simple request for brevity, I’d have had to finish my thought. Life’s funny sometimes, isn’t it?