A True Test of Skill

This is satisfying:

This is unsatisfying:

This is most relevant to competitive board games, but it can also sometimes matter for RPGs.

Luck provides uncertainty. Challenge-based games need uncertainty or else they'll become solved. Without uncertainty, every time you play, you would keep getting the same outcome. But too much uncertainty can undermine strategic integrity. Good luck and bad luck keeps everyone on their toes, but I do prefer games where good decision-making matters more than luck. After all, what's the point of putting effort into understanding a game, into forming a sound strategy, if that effort can't compensate for bad luck? To the competitive mind, there's nothing more thrilling than beating your opponent even though you kept rolling worse than they did, simply because you were better at the game than them.

Luck can also be a great tiebreaker for players who are otherwise evenly matched. Stalemates aren't very satisfying, so luck usually ensures that someone gets to walk away a winner. But I'm tired of playing games that only possess an illusion of skill. Where the winner looks at their own victory and has no choice but to admit, "I didn't really earn that. I just drew a better hand."

-Dwiz

Summer LEGO RPG Setting Jam

This is my submission to DIY & Dragon's Summer LEGO RPG Setting Jam. Got it in just under the wire. Click this link to access a Google Drive folder with all the materials.

Just like everyone else, I was super excited when I read Anne's announcement for the jam. And also just like everyone else, my thoughts immediately turned to adapting my own personal favorite LEGO sets from my childhood. But whereas most of you probably thought of easy themes like Castle or Space, I had a much trickier one in mind.

One year for his birthday, my older brother received the Scary Monster Madness Kit, a collection of four sets that made up a sub-theme of the LEGO Studios theme, which was a fairly obscure product line based on Hollywood movies and filmmaking. In this case, these four sets were inspired by classic Universal Horror movies. It should come as no surprise that my siblings all share my obsessive enthusiasm of all things spooky and Halloween-y, and so you can imagine that those toys were very well-loved in my household.

But there's a problem with the premise. How do you adapt this theme into an RPG setting? Every other LEGO theme presents an imaginary scenario that's not far off from an RPG setting already. Fictional characters, a secondary world, dramatic situations, etc. But the entire conceit of the LEGO Studios theme is that they are not depicting "real" people, places, or situations within the context of the set's universe. They are specifically fictional within the diegesis itself. Each set depicts not an actual scenario of monsters and heroes, but of actors and film crew members playing the parts of monsters and heroes. It's very literally an example of anti-worldbuilding. How do you adapt that? How do you preserve the premise of that theme while also making it into a gameable world?

This is my strange answer to that question. I hope you enjoy it.

-Dwiz