A codified form of my approach for running immersive roleplaying games.
At every table, with every system, there is an imaginative world. It is both unique to each individual and shared by everyone at the table. There are many ways to play, but a table that adopts a “Play Worlds” approach values the following:
- Embracing concealed mechanics.
- Fostering living worlds.
- Hacking media into new worlds.
- Emphasizing rulings, not rules.
- Ensuring fairness through trust.
Concealed Mechanics
In this style, the GM conceals all (or most) mechanics from the players. This is also called “blackbox” or “HUD-less” roleplaying. While radical to many, concealing rule systems goes all the way back to the beginning of the hobby. When players no longer have a character sheet with prescribed mechanisms to play, they are instead forced to use immersive natural language. Players don’t “spend 1 maneuver to aim and get a bonus +d6 to the roll”, they say “I take the time to concentrate on hitting the damaged clamp on this mech’s armor, even though there are lots of lasers flying around me.”
Living Worlds
The player characters may be special, but they are not the only force for change in the world. Leaders rise, cities fall, droughts kill, and old gods vanish. The peoples of every world are vast and varied, their collective sway over the fiction is greater than the players. Regardless of any character’s actions, the world shifts and changes under their feet.
Hacking Media
When one creates a new world, they hack content from film, books, and other media. Since a “Play Worlds” approach is natural language first, any text or images from these sources can be used directly in the game. Do you have an awesome book on early Medieval swords? Pick your favorite and record its image and the paragraph that describes it. That’s a stat block.
Rulings Not Rules
No system, no rules, can accurately resolve every situation. A dagger deals d4 damage in thousands of roleplaying games, but a dagger to the eye kills everyone I know. When four characters wrestle an armored knight to the ground, wrench open his visor, and drive a dagger into his brain… he dies. It doesn’t matter if he has 10, 20, or 1000 hit points left. He dies because the fiction demands it. The GM, an arbiter of the world, makes it so.
Trust
Find a table where everyone trusts each other to not abuse the above approach. The players trust that the GM does not make arbitrary or unilateral decisions, even if they make a ruling without a mechanic to support it. The GM trusts that the players know what their characters are capable of and won’t abuse the GM’s trust to “win”.
In Short
The GM uses whatever mechanics they want, but they conceal them from the players. They describe an imaginative world that players can immerse themselves in as their chosen character and they reinforce that immersion with natural language. However the GM decides to resolve uncertainty in this world is up to them, but the table trusts the GM and the GM trusts the players. Everyone is there to have a good time and enjoy this world beyond our own.
Disclaimer: this is what “Play Worlds” means to me, but I did not coin the phrase and you don’t have to agree. If you are interested in discussing this approach to playing roleplaying games, feel free to join the Play Worlds server on Discord.
I also have a follow up to this piece with a post critiquing this approach. If you made it this far, happy new year.
Edited on January 4th to use the phrase “trust” instead of “high trust” to indicate that a normal friend group’s level of trust is often enough. You do not need some unique or rare trusting skills to play this way.
The Dolent Chronicle is an RPG blog produced by Dante Nardo. If you liked this post, please consider sharing it on whatever doomed planes you reside.