red-headed android

there are two ways to play tabletop RPGs. one of them is objectively better than the other and i’m gonna tell you why.

the first way is what i call ‘custom theory’, because it’s like when you open the customization menu in a video game. in this theory, you choose your favourite game and you play it. if you want to create a specific experience with that game, that’s okay; you can modify the game to be better at that specific thing. you can add rules. you can change things according to your players’ preferences. and you don’t have to learn another system, ever.

the second way is what i call ‘toolbox theory’. in this theory, you choose the game that works best for the experience you want to have and you play it. pick your experience. choose the tool that works best for that experience. play that game. maybe you have a favourite game, but if you do, it’s because you love the experience it provides. this way, you learn several systems, but you never have to change how they work.

this isn’t one of those articles with buildup and suspense: toolbox theory is better. if you play TTRPGs, you should use it to pick your games, both when deciding what groups you join and when choosing the games you pitch to your personal group (if you have one).

sharp-eyed readers may already suspect that this is a barely veiled hate post about Dungeons and Dragons. surprise! it’s not! Dungeons and Dragons has very little to do with this. it’s not even close to the worst offender in terms of Games Frequently Associated With Custom Theory. that game is actually FATE. or maybe Cortex Prime.

why is custom theory not as good as toolbox theory? it’s simple:

• tabletop games are hard to design
• because tabletop games are hard to design, it’s easier to learn one than to design one
• writing new rules or content to add a certain feel to an existing game, as in custom theory, is design work
• finding a game that matches a feel you already want, and figuring out how to run or play it, as in toolbox theory, is learning work

therefore, toolbox theory is better because you replace a harder kind of work with an easier kind of work.

for any benefit you get, you spend less effort if you got that benefit from learning instead of from designing. this is true in other parts of life too. it’s easier to write good code if someone teaches you than if you learn from scratch. it’s even easier if you copy code that’s already good. you get better results faster.

if we lived in a perfect world that would be the end of it. but we don’t. and the reason we don’t live in a perfect world is that not every possible tabletop game has actually been designed, and not every possible tabletop game is actually good. some of them suck and some of them don’t exist. what does toolbox theory have to say about experiences whose best match is a game that sucks? here are some scenarios that might arise that seem to challenge toolbox theory.

scenario 1: the game you want exists but it sucks. there’s a tabletop game that does a really good job at delivering the exact experience you want–1980s preteens solving supernatural mysteries, for instance–but you open it up and the rules just don’t look good. or the setting doesn’t. or some other element of the game is just not working for you. what do you do then?

in that case, you find the next best thing. maybe there’s a game that’s close to the experience you want, and you’d only have to turn off one or two optional rules for it to work. if there’s not a next best thing, and your choice is between “get the experience my group wants most, but design my own shit to do it”, and “get another experience my group wants a little less, that has a system specifically designed for it”, i think it’s always a good idea to choose a slightly less appealing experience with a better game attached to it.

yeah you heard me right. your toolbox isn’t just all the games you know how to run or play. your toolbox is ALSO all the experiences you think are cool to have in a TTRPG. if you like wizards AND cyborgs, like cyborgs more than wizards, but you’d have to do way more work to play cyborgs, choosing to play wizards instead isn’t a moral failing. it’s just the efficient choice.

remember: rules can be bad in more ways than just being hard to learn or clunky. rules can be so bad that they hurt the experience itself, because they don’t actually match it. if a game looks terrible or half-baked but promises exactly what you want, you should doubt its ability to deliver on that promise. go with the safe option in your toolbox: an experience that you know there’s a good game for.

scenario 2: the game you want doesn’t exist. we’ve all been there: we want to play specifically Dororo, the loose 2019 anime adaptation of Osamu Tezuka’s famous manga, but there’s no game for it! shit!

so we frantically look through our toolbox for stuff that feels like Dororo (2019), and there’s nothing. Dungeons and Dragons’s magic system and monsters simply don’t work, and besides, we want a grounded story with only a few characters, not an adventuring party. Monster of the Week? no! you can start with a machine gun! Tenra Bansho Zero? despite also being japanese fantasy (sorta), it’s nothing like Dororo, so no.

in this case, you have two options. first, as described above, you can calibrate your expectations, choose a different experience that you want, and play that game instead. second, you can take a system that’s flexible and light and steer it in the direction of the experience you want.

i cannot stress this enough: you must pick a flexible and light game from your toolbox for this. in my case, i picked Ironsworn and it didn’t work. i picked a game with too much specificity, and relied too heavily on player buy-in to create the tone i wanted. it was a mistake. but what i didn’t do was pick a system like Pathfinder and try to rewrite it to be Dororo. i picked a light system with rules that could lend themselves to various tones, and i added subtle touches, flavour, setting, and other GM work that has nothing to do with the system and that all promoted it being More Dororo.

design work is harder than learning work. and GM work–engineering your pitch, your setting, your NPCs, all those elements that are not part of the rules, to fit a specific tone–is also harder than learning work. but GM work is easier than design work. if you can take a light game, a game with not a lot of rules to begin with, and build up the exact experience you want by running it the right way, then that’s a perfectly valid use of your tools. just make sure the work you do to create that experience is worth the experience you want to have. you might be better off playing Wizard RPG if the players all like wizards just fine.

scenario 3: the game you want exists, but nobody wants to learn it. this sucks. i get in this position all the time and it sucks. toolbox theory doesn’t have any advice here. remember, toolbox theory is a dumb robot that just says “PICK THE GAME THAT MATCHES YOUR VIBES” on repeat. people are more complicated than that.

one option is to give up. play Wizard RPG with your wizard-loving friends. you like Wizard RPG. it’s not that important that you get to play your bespoke “psychic cyborg dolphins in a post-apocalyptic future” game, right? there’s another experience right there that’s almost as good! that’s also a tool!

the other option, if you really care about those dolphins, is to go find a new group that wants to play Dolphin RPG just as much as you do. this doesn’t mean you have to ditch your current group as friends–it just means that in the context of RPGs, you’d rather play dolphins than play with those people. not everyone thinks this is a reasonable option. if you don’t, i’m not gonna tell you you should do it.

like i said, we don’t live in a perfect world. sometimes you gotta make these choices.

scenario 4: you are always playing your favourite game and it’s your favourite because you like the experience it creates. congratulations, you’ve won tabletop RPGs! if you only need one game, that’s your whole toolbox. you never get bored of Wizard RPG? you’re wizardpilled? you’re pondering your orb? i could not be happier for you. i wish i was you.

but if anyone ever says “let’s put aliens in our next campaign of Wizard RPG”, maybe do a quick google search to find out if there’s a Wizards vs. Aliens RPG before you waste weeks of your life trying to create it.

scenario 5: wait, but design work is fun and i want to do it!

there comes a time in every dedicated TTRPG player’s life that they look at a game and think “i can do better than this.” and you know what i say to that? you probably can. go do it! go make a game, or a modification to a game, or whatever! there’s no toolbox without someone sitting down and making all the tools!

but don’t do this because you want to play a game. do this because you want to–because you love to–create something worthwhile. toolbox theory is about having fun more efficiently, by reducing the amount of time you have to spend on Assorted Bullshit like “learning a game” or “making a game” or “convincing people to play a game”.

if you’re already having fun being a designer, keep doing it. if the design is the goal, if it’s what you’re passionate about, you have ascended beyond toolbox theory as a concept. it’s no longer applicable to your fun. you are now, in some contexts and some capacity, the engineer, not the person using the tools. and that can be one of the most rewarding things you can do in this hobby.

but, like, that shit is hard. don’t say i didn’t warn you.