Just Make A Game

 My Minimalist TTRPG Jam Experience

Last week I took a look at the ‘Jams’ tab on itch.io, not looking for anything in particular. I was idly scrolling through, scanning down the calendar and mentally filtering out those aimed at video game developers. One that caught my eye was the Minimalist TTRPG Jam hosted by Binary Star Games. I do most of my game design during brief quiet spells at work so the idea of not having to mess around with layout, design etc. really appealed to me. The result turned out to be Pommel, a succinct and ultra rules-lite system that is just about as bare bones as I think I could make a game.

The rules of the jam are simple and I’ll paraphrase them here. Pick one of the four minimalist templates that Binary provides and do not alter the font or colours. ‘No pictures, no drawings, no diagrams…No further layout,’ reads the conditions for entries. I found this perfect to simply sit down, have a think and then bang out a game. It only took a few hours (albeit spread over the course of an eight-hour work day) and was great in letting me focus on the content of the game itself rather than the look of it. 

    I reached out to Binary as I started writing this post, mostly to confirm that he was okay with me writing about the jam. This gave me an opportunity to ask a couple of questions, specifically where the idea for the jam came from as well as how the minimalist style influences his own creative process when it comes to making games such as the mecha RPG APOCALYPSE FRAME. Binary got back to me with a great response which I am just going to let you read, as it gives some really nice insight into both the jam and TTRPG creator culture:

‘What prompted me to host the jam was a twitter post by Chris Longhurst (@potatocubed) about what a neat idea it would be and how he didn’t have the time to do it. I actually followed through on it for a few reasons: one, because I personally have a real tendency to get caught up in aesthetic choices too early, which slows down production drastically as I do and redo things. If I have a better idea of where the thing’s going, I can make more informed decisions.

A bigger one though was an observation about the way non-written art is treated in the RPG space. The jam started around the time one of the big AI art scuffles happened online: a big argument by proponents was that AI art was a compromise between good, expensive art and no art, and that a project with no art is as good as dead. And thanks to that I was thinking about how silly it was that one kind of art was subjugated to the need for other art to be considered “legitimate”. Game design, rules design, writing, etc is its own thing. So my hope was that a few others would come to agree by doing this simple challenge with me, and that new people would feel like they were on a level playing field.

Another thing I was thinking about was burnout. Spencer Campbell (of LUMEN, RUNE, etc) had just shut down his discord in part because he’d felt like that pressure to be always online and responsive was a lot. Just thinking about the number of hats you have to wear - writer, promoter, producer, organizer, crowdfund runner, etc - to do anything at scale, and the meager result you’d get, is exhausting. Spencer had posted something about missing those early giddy days of tapping something out in google docs in a weekend and like…you can do that. Anytime! I kind of wanted existing designers to realize the fun that brought them to the table in the first place.

As for minimalism, I’m definitely more in that boat than not. For most of its lifetime, APOCALYPSE FRAME was going to be a game with no art except a stock photo cover, and my layout isn’t going to blow any minds even at its most daring. But there are a lot of advantages to this. For one, everything is easily legible and organizable: I want as little a barrier between the text and someone reading it to play a game as possible. For another, it makes it much easier to make accessible versions. If you’re avoiding pictures, it’s pretty simple to make things like pure-markdown versions that capture the majority of your work.’

Part of why this jam was so great is that it helped solve the problem I have with just writing the damn games. It’d been over a year since the release of my last piece, a MÖRK BORG supplement called Lair of the Lizard Cult, and honestly my struggle has just been to take a game from ideation to publication. As Binary said, the amount of hats you have to wear is exhausting, and it's hard not to compare yourself to other, more prolific creators. Sometimes it is just a case of putting your head down and running with something. So designing a game within the limits of this jam allowed me essentially to sprint to the finish line. I think that from now on I will do all of my game writing in this minimalist style, publish it on itch.io so people can at least play the thing, and only after that pretty it up with art and layout when I find the time. 

    It’s been great to finally have a new game out after all this time, especially as it’s my first stand-alone system. The idea for Pommel came about primarily because I wanted a system that would allow you as a roleplayer to state something wildly imaginative and achieve it without being bound by rules. The core philosophy of Pommel is that if you roll well on the die then you can do whatever you want. The following is an excerpt from the game that I feel embodies this principle really well, even if I do say so myself:

All that can reign you in is the roll of the die. Should you say ‘my spell opens the door,’ this is as easily achievable as saying ‘my spell plucks the moon from its ancient orbit and brings it careening earthward! The seas boil with chaos, the land writhes with fear!’ You can achieve either with a favourable die roll, as long as the action is right for the tone that has been set at your table. 

This principle is implemented using a simple roll-over system which determines a degree of success. A roll of one on a six-sided die denotes failure with consequences. A roll of two means plain failure, three to five is a success and six means success with complications. This is the only thing that really stands as a hard-and-fast rule in Pommel, the rest serving more as guidelines. 

Player-characters are made by taking three Resources (Will, Strength and Gear) and making them personal. One character’s strength might be the literal strength of their arm, another’s might be their skill in getting into locked places. Will represents a player-characters motivation to go adventuring, whether that’s for material gain, an oath etc. Gear is just a signature item that the player-character can call upon to help them out in a bind, anything from a sword to a pogo stick. Losing all three Resources results in the character’s demise and they can be lost either by dropping to zero hit points or by sacrificing them willingly to turn a failed roll into a success. Characters advance when the facilitator feels they’ve achieved something noteworthy and this allows them to replenish their Resources. 

That’s essentially Pommel in its entirety! I was inspired by a desire for something that would allow players to focus on building wildly imaginative characters with abilities restrained solely by chance. I’ve yet to playtest it so expect future versions as I work out the kinks, and I welcome any feedback in the meantime. Pommel is currently pay-what-you-want over on the Lost Path Publishing itch page, so head over there to check it out. If you like it it would be super cool if you could throw me a couple of quid for it. I was also driven by wanting to use system-neutral publications that have been sitting on my shelf such as Lost Pages’ The Book of Gaub which is full of dreadful spells with no rules attached so as to more easily slot into your games. As there are no rules governing spells in Pommel other than ‘roll 1d6 to fail or succeed’ it will be easy for anyone wishing to play a wizard to go to town unleashing the horror of the aforementioned tome.

    In terms of design, it was just a case of building everything around the core mechanic. The idea of a simple roll-over system that functions as a one size fits all really appealed to me. For this project my feeling was the less modifiers the better. I’ve also been enjoying a number of games lately that feature a ‘degree of success’ element in their dice rolls, which I felt could add some nuance. Additionally, the prospect of being able to over-succeed appealed to me as I feel it represents well the notion that adventurers may not know their own strength or have to exercise restraint. Something I enjoyed was imbuing the game with just a touch of story. In the game jam’s rules, the ‘Hard Mode’ included this rule: ‘Keep the amount of expository/prose writing low - aim for like 5-10% of the work, tops. See what kind of tone, feel, vibe, and themes you can get across with just text as conveyed through mechanics, list choices, etc.’ So I tried to mostly stick to writing rules, but occasionally a morsel of lore or setting would slip through, like in the description for the ‘Steel Giant’ enemy: ‘A metal behemoth, forged by hand and by magic to serve the long-dead spell-smiths.’ It might be fun to elaborate on this by writing a few adventures that could bundle with the game. Something to think about I suppose! 

It might be worth mentioning that Pommel is licensed under CC BY which allows you to make what you like using the system. I’ll hopefully get around to making a graphic of some kind that, should they wish, creators could pop on their third-party content. So feel free to start making games and supplements using  Pommel, it would be amazing to see.

    If you haven’t yet, it would be amazing if you could check out Pommel. It’s already got some love and if more people could go on to have minimalist, imaginative adventures with it, I'd be incredibly satisfied. As well, if you write your own TTRPG content, do consider submitting to the Minimalist TTRPG Jam, at the time of writing there’s still just over a week for you to sit down, tap out a game and put it out there. Trust me when I say it’s a super fun and rewarding experience. Thanks again to Binary for taking the time to send back a thoughtful reply to my questions, and thank you, reader, for reading and be sure to keep an eye out next week for another stray letter from The Lost Post.