Casting Shadows

Today we have crossed over into the second half of @RPGaDAY2024. If you have been steaming along undaunted, you deserve congratulations for making it this far. If you have hit some obstacles and missed some or a lot of prompts, I want to remind you that the invitation to participate is open. Every day of August can be a new start for the event. Pick up where you left off, or jump back in with the current day – whichever moves you. If you are at loss for motivation, use the hashtag to see what others have been posting throughout the event, leave some likes and comments, and see what starts to inspire you to post yourself!

The standard prompt for #RPGaDAY2024 today is Quick and the suggested direction to take that prompt is “quick to learn.” As usual, the suggestion is as abstract or as specific as you care to make it, and the prompt can be turned to whatever purpose moves you toward posting positively about RPGs. You might share about an RPG that is quick to play in the moment, one that lends itself toward short, fast-paced sessions, one that has mechanisms that can be resolved quickly, or we can leave the attachment to a specific RPG behind and look at the people we play with, the aesthetic or goal of a designer, or a prized methodology for getting into new games – to name a few.

Over the last few years, by chance more than anything else, all of the games that we have chosen to play have either been what I consider to be quick to learn, or have been familiar and so were quick to relearn or adapt to. There have been enough list posts here lately, so let’s look at what contributes to my sense of a game being quick to learn.

I used to feel that it was sufficient for the mechanisms themselves to make sense in the context of the game as a whole, but time and an ever widening group of people played with has demonstrated that this is not the case. If the group did or did not learn was more often attributable to someone in the group interpreting the text of the game for the others and establishing how the game was going to be played by that group. As a result, my primary criterion is that the text present its material in well-organized sections with a logical flow between each section with clear visual cues to distinguish each section so it can be easily referenced in need. It doesn’t matter to me if the book is meant to be read in order from start to finish, or if it can be read out of sequence. What matters is that the writer knows how to play the game, has played with people who have not known how, and through communication about the game, has reached a sense that those taught, actually learned.

How that is approached can vary. It can be annotated in detail about the reasoning of the designer and the rationale for each mechanism, or not. It can use color, flow charts, and call-out boxes to isolate, clarify, and reinforce core ideas, or not. It can be conversational or it can be technical, long or short.

What it cannot be – if it wants to be ‘quick to learn’ – is random and disorganized. It cannot explain an idea one way then present it in an example that shows something else. It cannot base play on a principle, such as improvisation, mathematical interactions, or collaboration without making that principle plain and accessible to newcomers in the text through instruction, explanation, and example. Quick to remember is not quick to learn. Short in length is not quick to learn. Unified mechanism is not synonymous with quick to learn.

If, however, it introduces each concept clearly and with accurate examples and guidance through the essential steps of running the first few sessions, and then links them together in a way that the reader can follow, remember, and reproduce…? That game will not only be quick to learn, but effective as a teaching tool as well.