It’s Random Bullshit time.

Once in a while — but never more than once a month — instead of writing a carefully planned and outlined pile of rambling crap, I fart out some unplanned, unoutlined rambling crap. It’s rambling crap either way, but whereas the former is useful and practical — shut up, it is — the latter is just me blathering on about whatever’s on my mind. Sometimes there are headings, sometimes I make a point, sometimes I provide good advice, but sometimes it’s none of that shit. I never quite know where these little stream-of-consciousness screeds are going to end up.

You’ve been warned…

Open-Endedness, Open Challenges, and Hat Theory

The other day — maybe yesterday; I have no idea what day it is anymore — the other day, I got into a thing with someone in my supporter Discord server about what I call open-ended creativity challenges. The details of the thing don’t matter. The discussion wasn’t really about them. But it did make me think about them and a bunch of other stuff. I’ll get to all of these below. Unless I don’t. Who knows? This is bullshit, baby.

So… open-ended creativity challenges. Those are when the Game Master flings a situation at the players and challenges them to come up with some brilliant, clever, creative combination of resources, skills, and abilities to overcome the problem or escape the situation or whatever. The key here is that the Game Master didn’t have a particular solution in mind — though lots of Game Masters rationalize that shit by having some vague idea of what the players could do which then allows them to say shit like, “I never introduce a problem unless I can imagine a solution,” as if that makes that shit okay — the Game Master didn’t have a particular solution in mind but instead just built a situation and intends to just sit back and watch the players creative their way out of it.

Can you tell I don’t truck with that horseshit? Because I don’t. But, to some Game Masters, that’s pretty much the pinnacle of roleplaying gaming design. A Game Master’s job is to get the players into trouble and it’s up to the players to figure out how to get out of it. If they don’t — if they’re not smart enough or creative enough — they fail. Or they die. Whatever. That’s roleplaying games.

These are the same assholes who expect their players to divine based on nothing whether a fight is within their characters’ capabilities or not and, if they don’t guess right and run away, well, at least their new characters will know better.

As a result of my brilliant work here at this site, I’ve learned a lot and evolved a lot. Once upon a time, I wouldn’t have called that bullshit. Eventually, I recognized that it was bullshit but I couldn’t tell you why. Now, I not only know why it’s crap, but I know how to do it way better. In fact, over the last two years, I’ve started to see myself as the heart of a movement in roleplaying gaming. Really, though, that’s just because I have a giant-ass ego and because I’m desperate to believe I’m doing something actually meaningful instead of just crapping out bullshit blog articles about pretend elves but that’s neither here nor there. What matters is I think it’s my mission to bring game design back to roleplaying gaming. Actually, it’s probably more like drag roleplaying gaming kicking and screaming to some actual frigging game design because I’m not sure t game design was ever a thing the roleplaying gaming industry did. At least not generally. There’ve always been isolated adventure writers — some amateur, some professional — who knew how to build consistently well-designed games and who really knew their stuff, but they’re exceptions and not the rule.

Actually, that’s probably very unfair, but I’m feeling cranky and depressed so screw it.

Meanwhile, for more on my giant-ass egotistical claim that I’m not just a blogger, but a movement, see my last worthless, ranting screed, Untitled Bullshit.

To be absolutely clear, when I say game design, I really mean adventure design. Scenario Design. Remember that tabletop roleplaying game systems aren’t games, they’re engines. They’re piles of mechanics, systems, elements, and game content that must be assembled into games. Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder are engines; Rime of the Frostmaiden and Kingmaker and that untitled, awesome adventure you wrote and ran for your friends last week are games. It’s just like how Unreal Engine 5 isn’t a game but Elder Scrolls: Oblivion Remastered, which was built in UE5, is.

Yeah, I’ve covered this before. I’ve been saying it for years. You know what’s funny? A certain professional former designer at Wizards of the Coast, posted a couple of months ago on social media that he, personally, just realized that Dungeons & Dragons is an engine, not a game, and that the adventures are the games. Holy crap but I could have told you that years ago. Aren’t you sorry about that stupid-ass restraining order?

Because, yeah, I’ve covered this before. A lot.

Last year, I decided to get more actively involved in the broader online gaming community again after years of quietly reading, listening, and lurking and that definitely hasn’t helped my bitter depression at all. See, it’s actually led me into a lot of conflicts with people over this shit. Lots of folks seem to think I’m trying to turn tabletop roleplaying games into video games or board games or railroads or World of Warcraft or Gloomhaven or just crappy novels players are forced to dance through like puppets on strings. These folks think game design precludes open-endedness, agency, character development, emergent storytelling, fantasy, simulation, verisimilitude, living worlds, or whatever. They think you have to jettison all of that stuff if you try to make tabletop roleplaying games into, you know, games. Clearly these people have never played Breath of the Wild or Minecraft or Outer Wilds or No Man’s Sky or — one of my personal favorites and dang it but I wish I could afford to dump a couple hundred bucks replacing my flight stick because I really miss it — Elite: Dangerous. All of those games have minimal linear questing or storytelling — or none at all — and just invite you to live in their worlds and figure it out or forge your destiny or whatever. Sure, they’re each, in their own way, more limited than even the most basic tabletop roleplaying game adventure, but they’re still full of emergent storytelling, agency, character, open-endedness, and freedom.

Not that I need to tell you any of this. You know that argument’s a load of pigshit. Game design principles not only don’t preclude open-endedness, player agency, character drama, roleplaying, fantasy, or simulation, but they in fact subsume and encompass all of those things. And more things too. They’re all elements of design that you make happen. Depending, of course, on the game you’re designing. That’s because game designers know that gamers don’t just want isolated, abstract challenges, they want challenges mixed with drama mixed with story mixed with freedom mixed with immersion with et cetera mixed with ad nauseum. It’s just dumbasses who know jack shit about game design who think otherwise.

For more on that topic, see my recent article, Just Shut Up About Min-Maxing (Part I): Understanding Player Motivations. Man, I am getting the plugs in today.

What really pisses me off here, though, is that game design principles not only include all the good stuff that people say lie at the heart of roleplaying gaming but that those principles make it easier and more efficient to make all that good stuff happen and also make the good stuff even better.

Look, I’ve done the totally open-world, player-driven, pick-your-goal thing. That shit’s great for the right type of player. But let me tell you that the worst, most difficult, least efficient way to do it is to actually build a truly open world and improvise your way through it and also the outcome when you do that is a crapshoot. It might be great but it might be terrible. I can pull off the same thing with less work and end up with a better-quality product because of what I know. If you can get the experience you want with less work, more efficiently, and an improved outcome, why the hell wouldn’t you want that?

By the way, none of this is about that trick the players into thinking they have freedom when they really don’t scam that some of you always seem to accuse me of describing. Let’s not even go there. Today is not the day for the agency rant.

Moreover, I can handle a wider variety of player types in the same game. Because, while some players do eat that open-world shit up, lots of players actually just end up feeling lost or goalless because that isn’t actually what they want. I don’t have to reject those players and hand-pick a group with just the right mix of motivations. I know how to use the same game to make everyone happy. Well, mostly. Some groups are really incompatible, but I’m less likely to have that happen because I know how to build a game that does lots of things for lots of people.

All of that said, I didn’t mean to write yet another sales pitch for Game Design Über Alles. I’m done trying to sell closed-minded morons on shit that will make their games and lives easier and better. It’s a losing battle. I’m just here to provide tools and skills for the people that actually want them.

But I do want to talk about open-endedness and freedom and open-ended creativity challenges and what they say about the relationship between Game Masters and Scenario Designers and why Scenario Designers really shouldn’t worry about things like open-endedness and freedom and should probably just forget they’re writing scenarios for tabletop roleplaying games at all.

So, yeah, nothing big.

At the same time I’ve been convincing myself that I’m not just a blogger but a big movement — think of me as a BM for short — at the same time I’ve started to see myself as a BM, I’ve also become obsessed with compartmentalization. Or, as I’m choosing to call it, Roleplaying Gaming Hat Theory.

The premise of Hat Theory is that three jobs need doing to make a roleplaying game campaign happen and that, even if you’re doing all three jobs yourself — if you’re running a game, you’re definitely doing two of them yourself and lots of you are doing all three — even if you’re doing all three jobs yourself, it’s best to keep them totally separate. You should actually think of yourself as two or three people who pass information and output back and forth and who never, ever try to do each others’ jobs. You have to wear two or three different hats, you can never wear more than one hat at a time, and when you’re wearing one hat, you’re not allowed to do the job of another or even think about that other hat.

The first job is Game Mastery. As a Game Master, you sit at the table and you run the game. You describe the action, you resolve player actions, you determine outcomes, you manage the pace of the game session, and you keep the players engaged and invested. You live at the game table, you live in the moment, you invite the players to act, and you respond to their actions.

The second job is Campaign Managery. As a Campaign Manager, you do everything necessary to make sure there will be a next session for as long as the group wants to keep playing together. You handle the planning and logistics — you schedule games and recruit players to fill seats — you handle all the interpersonal shit — you resolve conflicts between players and between the players and the Game Master — and you make sure everything that’s needed to play the game is there. It’s the Campaign Manager who picks the game system and comes up with policies for character generation and character death and bookkeeping and character maintenance. You might think the Game Master should be doing that kind of thing, but the Game Master just runs the gameplay and all of that is about making sure the gameplay can actually happen and that nothing unexpected derails the gameplay.

But — and this is where Hat Theory really comes to the fore — but the Game Master does have input. The Game Master and the Campaign Manager work together. Let me show you what I mean.

Remember when I told you that you have to run the campaign that life lets you run? Like, it doesn’t matter whether you — and your players — really want a complex mystery-and-intrigue campaign if your actual group is a bunch of unreliable drop-ins who can’t be relied on for regular attendance and who can only give you two hours per session to work with. The mystery-and-intrigue campaign is gonna fail at that table.

If you imagine the Game Master and the Campaign Manager as different people, you might imagine the Game Master saying, “I love intrigues and mysteries and I know my players do too. That’s the kind of game I’ll enjoy running and the one my players will enjoy playing and the one that’ll really play to my strengths at the table.” Then, the Campaign Manager says, “Well, you do not have the group for that campaign. Should I ax this group and start recruiting a better set of players for it or would you prefer to keep this group and we’ll figure out what you actually can run for them?”

If you’ve ever worked through a problem like this, you know what it’s like to negotiate with yourself in your own head. If you’re smart and mature and rational, it really do be like that.

Hat Theory is also what tells you to never resolve conflicts in the game. Like, if you’ve got a player doing something disruptive, you don’t just drop in-game consequences on them so they’ll see the error of their ways and shape up. The Campaign Manager is supposed to handle disruptions and conflicts; the Game Master isn’t qualified to handle that crap. It’s not the Game Master’s job. Meanwhile, the Campaign Manager isn’t actually at the table running the game. That’s why the Game Master stops the game pulls the player aside and then calls the Campaign Manager to sort it out. Only once it’s sorted does the game continue.

This Hat Theory shit answers a lot of questions, doesn’t it? That’s how you know it’s great and so am I.

The third job is Scenario Designery. As a Scenario Designer, you design the actual gameplay. You design the adventures and the encounters and the campaigns that the Game Master runs and the players play. You make sure the Game Master has everything necessary in front of him to make a well-designed, satisfying gameplay experience happen. See, the Game Master can resolve actions and set the pace and keep the players engaged, but he’s not in a good position to do game design. He shouldn’t be setting goals or building challenges or stringing progressions together. The Game Master brings the game and the world and the characters to life, but the game and the world and the characters are the Scenario Designer’s handiwork.

This job, by the way, is the one that many Game Masters outsource. If you run published adventures rather than your own, homebrewed content, you’re letting someone else do the Scenario Design for you. Which is totally fine! I don’t say this enough, but I need to remind y’all that running published adventures is a totally valid, perfectly fine, absolutely fun way to run a game. Not everyone’s in this shit to be a Scenario Designer and not everyone’s got the time to commit to it. I know I’ve given you the impression that homebrewing is the best — or only — way to run games, but that is totally not what I think. In fact, part of my Game Design Über Alles dream is that there will be lots of high-quality published content for Game Masters to run so that most of y’all can just worry about running games. The game design tide lifts all the gaming boats.

But even if you — like me — want to be your own Scenario Designer and Game Master and Campaign Manager, I still don’t think you should be doing Scenario Design when you’re a Game Master. This is back to the Hat Theory. Scenario Design is game design, right? Well, game design is a deliberate, careful, top-down thing. You start with a big picture — a vision for the adventure or campaign or scene or encounter or whatever — and then you work out how you’re gonna make it and then you make it. Then you take it and you fit it neatly in between all the other things. That takes time and patience and fiddling and an ability to consider how things fit into the whole. There’s also just a lot to consider. Good roleplaying gaming scenario design encompasses game design, story design, and world design.

Game Masters just aren’t in a position to do any of that. Game Masters are always working under very intense time pressure and, consequently, they’re always working in the moment. Every decision a Game Master makes has to fit in the space left between a player declaring an action and the resolution of that action. Game Masters also just have a lot on their plate. Managing a game, keeping it moving, keeping everyone engaged, bringing everything to life, all of that shit takes a lot of energy. It’s not fair to ask them to do complex, big-picture game design on the fly too.

By the way, this is why the Scenario Designer can’t run games. The Scenario Designer can’t think fast or do anything on the fly. The Scenario Designer is part artist and part clockmaker. Assuming, of course, the Scenario Designer actually aspires to greatness, but why wouldn’t he? If anything’s worth doing, it’s worth doing great.

So the Scenario Designer does his damndest to make sure the Game Master never, ever has to make anything up on the fly. That’s why being a good Scenario Designer means being good at designing and predicting player choices. If the Scenario Designer knows that, at the very least, the players are going to choose to do either X, Y, or Z, he only has to prepare the Game Master for those three things and the Game Master won’t be caught flat-footed.

Now we’re getting to that open-endedness thing. But first, let me address the idea of improvisation. I am not saying that Game Masters should never improvise. They should. They do. They have to. They’re the ones in the trenches actually delivering the game to the players. Whatever the players do, they have to respond. If the players disengage or if the players are floundering and feeling lost, the Game Master has to recover the game. Improvisation is not only something Game Masters have to do, it’s one of their most important skills. But improvisation isn’t Scenario Design. I used to think it was — I used to think improvisation was just designing and executing at the same time — but I know better now. They are not remotely the same thing. I didn’t appreciate what game design was back then. Now I do. You can’t do it on the fly and what you can do on the fly doesn’t hold a candle to proper Scenario Design.

Improvisation is a tool you use as a Game Master to do your job. Because, remember, your job as a Game Master is to keep the game moving and keep everyone engaged. If the game stops or the players disengage, you fix that shit. If that means moving a combat encounter to the current moment to bring the energy up or improvising a sudden hook or giving the players a clue to get them unstuck, you do it. If you have to pull an encounter or character out of your ass, you do it. But, as a Game Master, you also have to know that improvisation isn’t a long-term strategy for providing a great ongoing gameplay experience. That’s why you pay your Scenario Designer.

So, let’s say you’re the Game Master and the game goes off the rails. The players do something that the Scenario Designer didn’t foresee or prepare you for or they just reject the premise of the adventure and go chase some other goal. You, the Game Master, might choose to find a way to get them back on script or you might just improvise responses long enough to get to the end of the session or you might even admit you weren’t ready for what happened and end the game session early. Those are all valid solutions and it’s up to you, the Game Master, to use your own best judgment to pick a solution and execute it.

Once the session is over, you, the Game Master, are going to go to your Scenario Designer and say, “Shit went off the rails and here’s what I did and here’s where I left it.” Then the Scenario Designer, also you, is going to say, “Cool, let me come up with something for the next session to pick up where you left off.” Maybe you, the Scenario Designer, will use your awesome game design skills to build a path to get the players back on track or maybe you’ll build a new scenario based on whatever it was the players did and then you’ll fit that into whatever other game design plans you had for future adventures. Again, you, the Scenario Designer, will use your best judgment to figure it out.

I know this all sounds silly, but it really does let you run your best game and your best campaign if you internalize this Hat Theory bullshit. If you think of the Game Master, the Campaign Manager, and the Scenario Designer as different people doing different jobs with different skill sets. It’ll keep you from trying to use skills in situations that make them impossible — like trying to do Scenario Design in a five-minute bathroom break because your game went awry — and it’ll keep you from using the wrong tools to fix problems — like trying to resolve disruptions by using gameplay. Mostly, though, it’ll just narrow your focus and limit the things you have to worry about.

Do you happen to remember all that shit I wrote about losing the plot? If you look at it all through the Hat Theory lens, you can see most of it just comes from to Game Master, the Campaign Manager, and the Scenario Designer swerving into each other’s lanes. It comes from wearing the wrong hat at the wrong time or trying to wear multiple hats at once.

So… open-endedness and open-ended creativity challenges and player-driven campaigns…

Tabletop roleplaying games are open-ended. That’s what makes them special. Special like Special K, not stop eating the paste special. Players notwithstanding.

Sorry…

Tabletop roleplaying games are open-ended. The players aren’t constrained by the number of buttons on a controller or the list of actions they’re allowed to take in their activity phase each turn. If they can think of a thing to do, they can have their character try it. If they can come up with a solution, they can attempt to implement it. As much as possible, constraints and restrictions come from the physics of the imaginary world — you can’t walk through walls… unless you’re a 9th level wizard with the right spell, of course — or from the situation the characters find themselves in — if you do that, the terrorist is going to shoot the hostage. Shit like that.

Even then, the players can do anything they’re willing to eat the risks or consequences of.

All that open-endedness is entirely the result of the human brain adjudicating the game. The Game Master is the only thing separating tabletop roleplaying games from board games, choose-your-path gamebooks, and video games. That’s why I often call the Game Master a game mechanic.

The Game Master is going to make the game open-ended. That’s his job. Some Game Masters don’t do the job right or do it well and some have been taught badly, but that’s humans for you. Most Game Masters actually do the job very well and they’d do it even better if they had better instruction and better tools and more trust. But that’s a story for another time.

The point is, the existence of a script — say, like, a scenario built by the Scenario Designer — doesn’t affect the open-endedness of the game one single iota. If there’s a Game Master who knows his job running the game, the script won’t stop the players from making their own choices nor stop the Game Master from adjudicating that shit.

A scenario — when you really break it down — a scenario just tells the Game Master what to do if and when the players take certain actions. “If the players fight the monster, here’s the stats.” “If the players search the room, here’s what there is to find and how hard it is to find it.” “If the players try to escape, here’s a set of mechanics that’ll help you determine the outcome.” Beyond that, it just describes the state of the world. “There’s a wall here. Players can’t go this way.” “The terrorist has a hostage in front of him like a human shield, his gun pointed at her head.”

Of course, a good Scenario Designer builds a scenario that motivates the players to do the things he’s designed to do and predicts what reasonable players are likely to do so he knows what ifs and whens to write into the adventure, but, really, that’s all scenario design is. Provide a goal the players are motivated to seek and provide a path with challenges they must overcome to get there. Also, make it engaging and meaningful and rewarding and all that crap because it’s a game and games are supposed to feel engaging and meaningful and rewarding.

This is why adventures going off the rails isn’t the giant ass problem screaming morons on the internet make it out to be and why players don’t complain nearly as much about being railroaded as my fellow Game Mastering advice providers want you to believe. A well-designed scenario presents the players with choices they actually want to make and it prepares the Game Master for when the players make those choices and it provides some tools for resolving contingencies when the players make other reasonable choices.

The point is, though, that the Scenario Designer can always count on the Game Master and the players to bring open-endlessness and creativity to the table. Sure, he’ll leave some space for it if he’s smart, but it’ll exist even if he doesn’t. If there’s a monster in a room, some players will choose to avoid it by sneaking by, and that’s a choice they’ll make whether the Scenario Designer built it or not. The Game Master knows how to resolve sneaking and perception and will make note of the fact that the monster’s still there. Of course, a smart Scenario Designer is likely to consider those options, which is why adventures often include contingencies like “if the players sneak…” and “if the players talk…” and “if the players fight…”

Given that — and now we come back to Hat Theory — given that, the Scenario Designer doesn’t have to sweat open-endedness and creativity and shit like that. The Game Master’s got it covered. The Scenario Designer should be aware of them, of course, and can help the Game Master be ready for them, but the bigger problem on the Scenario Designer’s plate is making a game that players can play without open-endedness and creativity.

I know how that sounds; hear me out.

Take the whole open-ended creativity challenge thing. A challenge that asks the players to MacGuyver their way to success with a pile of randomly chosen odds and ends and the abilities on their sheet is not actually a challenge and it isn’t really fair. It’s not the test of skill and intellect that you think it is.

MacGuyver solutions don’t come from reason and intellect. They’re actually much closer to inspiration. They arise from things like intuition, perception, and personal experience — there’s more Wisdom than Intelligence there — but those are just the ingredients. The real limiting factor is really just luck.

Now, some people are better at inventing MacGuyver solutions than others and the more real experiences people have, the better they get at them, but it’s not an active process like, say, deducing the solution to a logic puzzle or doing a math problem. It’s just one of those, “In a flash, I realized I could use the pfeffernüsse cookie to recover the damaged code from the back of the gift card,” things. True story, by the way. I saved Christmas last year and everything. I’m awesome.

My point is that MacGuyver-type solutions are inspirational flashes. They come from random associations firing in your brain together at just the right time to connect a bunch of disparate elements into the start of a solution from which you can puzzle out the rest. It’s a total crapshoot. You can’t make them happen.

They’re especially tricky to count on at the game table because everything’s mostly verbal and narrative unless the Game Master goes crazy with the visual aids. The more different kinds of sensory inputs you’ve got, the more pathways are firing in your brain at the same time to facilitate the weird-ass lightning-striking-lighting you need to trigger a MacGuyver solution in your brain.

It’s easier to think of weird ways to use an oddly shaped stick if you’re touching the stick.

Familiarity with the elements of your solution also helps a lot with the whole MacGuyver solution thing. The better you know the objects in front of you, the more weird-ass, off-label uses your brain is likely to conjure up. As someone who gave himself diabetes through years of piss-poor self-care, I’m extremely familiar with the properties of powdered sugar and I can solve a lot of problems with the stuff. As a former compulsive spender, I know everything there is to know about gift cards. In neuroscientifical terms, there are a lot of wires connected powdered sugar and gift cards to a lot of other places in my brain.

The same’s true of your own personal skills. The more familiar you are with your skills — the more you’ve tested them — the more seemingly unrelated problems you can solve with them. I can solve a lot of problems with a spreadsheet — even some you wouldn’t imagine — thanks to my misspent years as an accountant.

In tabletop roleplaying games, the characters’ skills are all esoteric and abstract and most players don’t know jack shit about what their characters’ skills can really do. Most players don’t know the first thing about outdoor survival. I once had to run a fantasy wilderness adventure for a bunch of Chicago kids who had never seen a forest. Seriously. Do you think any of them was going to come up with a thousand-and-one ways to use, say, deer sinew?

Players can — and do — come up with MacGuyver solutions. They do it all the time. I’m not saying otherwise. Last night, one of my players was performing a forensic examination of the corpse of a dude who’d been killed by an ice demon at a truck stop. She asked some very clever, very inspired questions and got some very good information for her trouble. I’m not saying players can’t do that shit. They can. They do. The problem is that it’s a crap shoot. MacGuyver solutions pop out of player brains like jackpots from a slot machine. Sometimes everything lines up and brilliance spills out of their noise holes. Sometimes all that comes out is the Price is Right sad trombone noise. Lots of times.

As a Scenario Designer, therefore, I’ve got to design scenarios that work even if the player’s slot-machine brains aren’t paying out. Because that’s what usually happens and when it doesn’t, that’s down to luck more than practicable skill. Thus, I don’t waste too much time thinking about what will happen when the player asks the right combination of inspired questions to get some extra information. The Game Master knows the adventure’s plot and backstory, the mystery’s solution, knows how to ask for a Medical Science – Forensics skill check, and knows that it’s his job to reward that kind of player cleverness. He’ll handle it.

Me? I’m worried about how to test the players’ actual skills so that a reasonable player who doesn’t have a MacGuyver jackpot will still realize the businessman’s valise has gone missing and think to start searching for that vital clue. I’m worried about how to make sure the players start thinking about where all the NPCs are at and who they don’t have eyes on whenever bad shit starts to go down. How do I make those tests of skill? How do I empower players to find the vital clues? How do I adjust the difficulty of tests of reason and deduction so that even an inexperienced player is very likely to find the valise and recognize its importance but only a skilled, clever player is likely to discover the optional clue that’ll give them a major edge in the climax?

That’s the shit my Scenario Designer loses sleep over.

Honestly, it’s really easy to design a situation the players can only get out of with a MacGuyver flash of inspiration. It takes no work at all. It’s much harder to build a situation such that a reasonable player of a specified level of intellectual skill has the proper odds of reasoning their way out of, and when they don’t, they’ll say, “Yeah, I totally should have realized that. I failed and deserved to lose.”

So, yeah, that whole “I don’t build encounters, I build situations,” just isn’t the flex you think it is.

And damn it, but that’s such a good line to end on that I’m just going to stop here. I didn’t even get to the part where Hat Theory helps you build an open-world, player-driven game. But who’d even want that?

Shit. I killed the ending moment. Let me fix that.

Ahem.

So, yeah, that whole “I don’t build encounters, I build situations,” just isn’t the flex you think it is.