Orthopraxy

Eating the Book--a response to 'We Need to Talk About Goodman Games'

Look--I get that people have their opinions about how things ought to work, yeah? Especially here in the OSR/NSR/POSR space, people like their fancy interior covers with maps and tables. They like their two page spreads that are easy to use at the table. They like their Necrotic Gnomesque bold-text hierarchy. I should know, I'm one of them!

But when I watched Ben Milton's most recent video--which essentially amounted to a call out post about Dungeon Crawl Classic's layout style, I...

Felt wronged? It didn't sit right with me. It rubbed me the wrong way.

This is not usually how I respond to RPG Criticism. But I felt a thought well up in me that I could not ignore: Ben Milton was fundamentally misunderstanding how DCC Modules are intended to be used.

"A bold claim," I thought to myself.

Immediately I knew I had to write out my thoughts about this. But, before we get to my own counter argument:

Please allow me to indulge in a brief side tangent

I recently ran Winter's Daughter for the first time a couple of weeks ago with a group of children for an educational program I'm a part of. And you know what? It was fucking magical, just like everyone said it would be. Christ. It ripped. It ran. It basically ran itself. I was just an awe-struck passive observer, letting this seminal piece of art speak through me, like the ancient Delphic oracle telling the Greeks how to defeat Xerxes, or St. John of Patmos writing the book of Revelation. It was, in short, a transcendent experience, and maybe the best session of an RPG I have ever ran.

But, quasi-religious experience aside, I have a confession: privately, I've always been a bit of a Winter's Daughter hater.

In contrast with my first experience running it, I cannot remember the first time I read Winter's Daughter, but it was probably around the time that I first got into OSE. I read it, sure, but it didn't leave an impression on me in the way that I typically expect masterworks to do. When you watch a great film you know it, yeah? Even if you don't like it? Well, not always, but probably often enough. And Winter's Daughter just didn't hit with me the way I expect game modules to--and certainly not in the ways that the things which got me into the OSR in the first place did--things such as Veins in the Earth or The God the Crawls or Broodmother Skyfortress did.

So I wrote it off. Sure, it might be recognized as great, but for my tastes? A bit basic isn't it? A bit quaint, eh? A spooky little crypt, some fun encounters, and a cute romantic ending. A nice one shot, finished in three hours with plenty of time for banter with the lads, right?

On first reading, it just wasn't memorable. In retrospect, I wonder if this underwhelming impression could be because the module was written not for the reader, but for the active GM. Until I experienced Winter's Daughter actively, I didn't know what I was looking at. You don't run Winter's Daughter, Winter's Daughter runs itself, with you as a middleman between the book and the table.

But you know what genre of game do have incredibly memorable modules? Trad games.

Trad games apologetica? In this OSR Blog Post???

As readers of this blog know, a frequent topic of discussion here is Impossible Landscapes by Dennis Detwiller, published in 2021 for the Delta Green roleplaying system. My table is currently facing down the prospect of Year Two of this campaign. It will probably be the last Trad campaign I run for a very long time (hopefully). The trad-gamer life is behind me, as I have learned to stop worrying about combat balance and learned to love the random encounter table.

But, once upon a time, I loved trad gaming. Or, at least, I loved reading trad game modules, especially ones of investigation and cosmic horror such as those published for Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green. Here's the thing about Call of Cthulhu modules if you haven't spent a lot of time with them: they are readable in the same way that a novel is readable. With a CoC module (and Delta Green, which I consider a bit of an heir to CoC) read the module from front to back and you get an honest-to-god Story. There is an initial incident. There is suspense. There is a climax. There is a resolution. It contains a complete narrative, just like you learned in High School English class.

And then (here's the magic), now that you know the story you can tell it to your friends! Isn't that great! This novel-like approach isn't unique to Call of Cthulhu, of course. The power of Ravenloft, for example, has never been its gameplay or its level design, but in the promise of its plot: you get to do a Dracula! Who wouldn't want that?

And Impossible Landscapes has maybe the best plot of any RPG module I have ever read. From the moment I started reading that PDF, I have been unable to get that plot out of my head. The characters--particularly Abigail Wright, Agent Marcus, and Asa Darabondi--have lived rent free in this dome of mine since the February of 2021.

You see--I ate the book.

Eating the Book

Impossible Landscapes opens with a warning from the author. It is an expression of intent, and one which I think about often when it comes to my own adventure writing. Detwiller writes:

This Book Has Teeth... ...but one of you must eat it. Chew it and swallow it, and then act as the book might act. This is no small trick. Then there is the dance. Once the dance begins, others arrive. It is their job to pretend to be someone else but to feel real fear. As they act, they dance. They dance with the person who has become the book, they dance with their real fear, and they dance around a table, and a story is told in the tracks of their steps.

Detwiller is describing the process of how a GM needs to intact with this book--or any trad module, for that matter. I have written at length here on this blog about how I've struggled with actually using Impossible Landscapes at the table. Heck, I converted a section into a depth crawl because the book was just not suitable for at-the-table reference even a little bit. But what this doesn't mean is that I struggle to run Impossible Landscapes--far from it. Recently, I haven't even needed to have the book with me at the table. I have not really had to do a lot of session-by-session prep either.

How is this possible? Impossible Landscapes doesn't need things like easy to read bullet points, or maps in the endpapers of the hardback because the content of the book was so memorable that I actually remember it. The story it tells is good! I have read the whole thing, from cover to cover, at least half a dozen times by now. Having "eaten the book", I don't need to look at it anymore. It's as much a part of me as a treasured novel, or a favourite film. Or, if you want to continue the metaphor, as my breakfast this morning is a part of me.

So how does this relate to Goodman Games and Questing Beast?

I think the way I feel about Impossible Landscapes is the same way that many people feel about Goodman Games' modules.

Here's a thought experiment--imagine running a module after reading it exactly one time. What would you rather have read--something like Winter's Daughter, or something like Sailors on the Starless Sea?

I think a lot of people would instinctively say Winter's Daughter, but hear me out. So much of what makes Winter's Daughter wonderful is the minute micro-level interactivity. This high amount of interactivity is the reason why the Necrotic Gnome style has taken off so much. The GM, at a glance, can let this immaculate world speak through them.

But would that work if you didn't have the book in front of you?

A Comparison

Let's compare two passages: one from Winter's Daughter and another from Sailors on the Starless Sea. These sections both have similar functions--they move the player from the mundane into the fantastical.

Let's start with Winter's Daughter. Here is the moment that the PCs step through the wards. Note that this is from the BX version, not the Dolmenwood version.

At the Bottom of the Stairs Ghostly candles (dozens, floating in mid-air). Warding the way (it is not possible to pass the bottom step without passing through the candles).

And here is the moment from Sailors where the players discover the titular Starless Sea.

Area 1-4 – The Starless Sea: The wide stone steps run down to the dark-sand beach of a vast underground sea. Far out across the water, you can make out a golden glow through the gloom. An enormous menhir stands at the water’s edge, dark waves lapping at its intricately carved faces. Past the towering standing stone, a dragon-prowed longship emerges from the darkness, its hull scrawled with forbidding sigils and runes that glow a sickly green in the dim light. The ship draws to a stop some 50 feet offshore. The beat of distant drums and far-off wails of terror mixes with the quiet lapping of the waves.

So, keeping with our metaphors which of these is easier to eat? These are both moments of liminal discovery--of the players crossing from one world (more metaphorically in Sailors' case) into another. In play, both of these moments create a sense of awe and wonder in the players, at least they have when I have ran them. Regardless of your opinions and preferences, everyone can see at a glance that Sailors is written to be literary. There is drama as the longship emerges from the darkness. Meanwhile, Winter's Daughter is more objective. While the text itself has no drama, any GM can use it to create drama.

For me, however, I have to think about my own experience. I read both of these modules for the first time around the same time. I remembered finding the Starless Sea much more vividly than I remembered entering Frigia. While I may not want to use this text as-written at my table, I did eat the book when I first read it, and I do have faith that, were I forced to speak as the book were to speak, I would have a much easier time remembering Sailors than I would Winter's Daughter.

To speak clearly

More traditionally written modules, such as those published by Goodman Games, are written so that the GM will remember the module's contents by making the writing itself engaging to read. Evocative descriptions, dramatic moments, and vivid atmosphere allow the GM to more easily eat the book, so that they may better "act as the book might act" when they run the adventure at the table. As such, there is less need for the book itself to be a helpful at-the-table resource.

In contrast, newer OSR modules, such as those published by Necrotic Gnome, are written so that the GM will not have to remember the module's contents even a little bit to run an effective adventure. Instead, a more objective approach is taken so that the book might speak for itself. As such, there is a higher need for the book itself to be a helpful at-the-table resource.

So, which is better?

I don't think we have to make this decision.

In fact, I would say that it was a mistake to frame this discussion as an argument--to debate about "which is better."

Some people want to eat the book. They would rather read through it, take notes, and then leave the book on the shelf and "speak as the book would speak". Others want to pick a book off the shelf, open it, and allow the book to "speak through them."

After spending some time getting these thoughts on paper, I think it is the decision to frame Goodman Games' style as a failing and not as a difference which ultimately rubbed me the wrong way about Questing Beast's video. I feel like it betrays a certain lack of...intellectual curiosity?

Especially for a critic.

Shouldn't a critic want to interrogate why a text does things that they didn't expect? Shouldn't they want to understand why some people like a thing, while they like another? Why the thing they like is special?

This doesn't mean that everyone has to like everything. But there is room in this space for different approaches. Different approaches and perspectives intersecting is when magic happens--in all art forms, not just in RPGs.

Good criticism fosters dialogue. There is no need to advocate for uniformity.