Complete Games

I. Dear Reader,

When D&D (1974) first came out, it wasn’t a complete game. In The Elusive Shift, Jon Peterson quotes a person saying in 1979 that “D&D is, in fact, less a game than a design-a-game kit”. Over the last 50 years, that’s a tension that hasn’t gone anywhere. Today, there are lots of games that are games and lots that are design-a-game kits.

There are games that say “this is what the game is about” and games that ask “what do you want it to be about?”.

If the appeal for both isn’t clear, think about buying a table and making one. I’m sure 99% of people reading this would buy a table but surely, it’s clear that making one could be extremely enjoyable and rewarding.

What I like about this analogy is that even as I really dislike games that ask me to make the game, I’m quite delighted to know that there is a culture where people make their own tables. It’s nice. And maybe I would do it if I wasn’t doing other things.

(I say “could be rewarding” because if you’re going to be doing so much work, you better not be hinging it on someone else liking your table. That sounds like a recipe for disappointment and so many RPG horror stories are about just that.)

But the funny thing about the RPG industry is because of the weight of tradition, most games feel like they’re not complete games – they all seem to require some amount of work to finish. The amount of work can vary. When I prep to run Impossible Landscapes, the module has some great stuff but it’s so dense and can’t be referenced during play. So I have to make extensive, exhaustive notes. When I play Pasion de la Pasiones, there’s some great moves at the heart of it but there’s a lot of setting and genre that has to be constructed around it.

(I don’t think this is bad per se. It’s hard to play the saxophone but I would never say it was designed badly. But there is a reason why there are only a few saxophonists.)

I go back to Johnstone Metzger’s post about how you can classify games based on the GM materials: “a pre-designed map, a pre-designed world, a linear storyline, a pre-designed relationship matrix, and materials for improvisation.” These are all ways that designer nudge RPGs towards being complete. It’s not about picking one, it’s about combining as many as you need.

(It’s also instantly clear how “materials for improvisation” is the least clear term in that list and someone needs to get in there and build on that.)

This is probably the most exciting trend for me in game design right now. The movement towards complete and all the paths it takes. But in Elusive Shift, Peterson’s argument is that with AD&D, the goal was to make a complete game as well as a closed one. Peterson is wistful, almost sad, for the period of creativity that came before. If we want to learn from history, it’s good to remember that even as we seek complete games, we’re not trying to create homogeneity or stultify creativity.

Yours incompletely,

Thomas

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II. Media of the Week

• RTFM have a fun episode about Pendragon, where they look at a couple different editions and talk about what they find appealing about this RPG classic.
• Game Study Study Buddies has a fun RPG adjacent episode where they talk about Playing Oppression, a book about how themes like empire and colonialism have been deployed in boardgames. the book is also public access and linked.

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• If you’ve released a new game on itch.io this month, let me know through this form so I can potentially include it in the end of the month round-up.

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III. Links of the Week

• On Rascal, I write about the Mountain Witch: “The first edition of The Mountain Witch by Timothy Kleinert was a part of a contest in 2004 called Game Chef. It’s a bloody game of trust and betrayal, featuring a cinematic, film noir version of Japanese ronin. It was—as much as the label could apply—an instant hit among the storygame community. It was stylish, experimental, had a clear voice and a vision. In 2018, Kleinert ran a successful crowdfunding campaign for a second edition—more than 1,500 people backed it, raising almost $70,000. Everything seemed fine for a month or so. But then the updates suddenly and abruptly ended. At first, backers were annoyed. Many of them got upset. Some got angry. They felt duped, cheated, robbed. Even 5 years later, backers were commenting on the campaign, either in sadness and anger. Then, suddenly, in January 2025, Kleinert posted an update. He apologized, revealed that he had brain cancer, and attached a PDF of the game.”
• On an episode of Yes Indie’d, Marsh Davies (TEETH) mentioned how videogames use a rule of three to tell stories through locations. I asked him to elaborate and he has: “Every place tells three stories…Their environments need to project atmosphere. They need to have a sense of history or purpose. They need to highlight to players those things that their characters might notice or be intrigued by, or introduce obstacles to their plans.”
• Minerva McJanda, creator of Voidheart Symphony, talks about the new edition: ““There’s a wound in the world, and no-one cares.” Those were the very first words I wrote for Voidheart Symphony, in the last days of 2018. Surrounded by inequality, tired and homeless and transitioning, I was tired of how unfair the world was, and how nobody around me could see a better way. Those words poured from the heart, and as I wrote what became the game’s introduction I fleshed out that core idea piece by piece.”
• Adrian Hon, designer of videogames like Zombies! Run!, writes about his experience playing chamber larps at the Smoke festival in London.
• Lin Codega plays a game based on Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower books and writes about it.
• Adam Bell (Grasping Nettles) writes a post about playing solo games in groups (and vice versa) for the Croaker RPGs newsletter.
• A nice post from Grinning Rat about why there’s a rise in games with pre-generated or named, canon characters and what makes a good pre-gen.

News, Misc

• Polygon invites some people to recommend their favourite game of 2024.
• Critical Role reveals that their books will be getting general distribution through Macmillan so expect to see them in bookstores, which is honestly huge news.
• Josh McCrowell (His Majesty The Worm) is putting together an online course on making dungeons with some collaborators and it looks interesting.
• The ACOUP blog has a great essay about currency and coinage and how they differ from how fantasy games portray them.

Reviews

• Giant Brain has a review of When The Wolf Comes, a norse-inspired game of space vikings.
• Brian McClellan’s Powder Mage series has a Savage Worlds adaptation that might be of interest to some people.

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IV. Small Ads

All links in the newsletter are completely based on my own interest. But to help support my work, this section contains sponsored links and advertisements. If you’d like your products to appear here, read the submission form.

• Nothing this week!

This newsletter is sponsored by the the wonderful Bundle of Holding.

• Hard Wired Island, the witty cyberpunk game, is discounted and bundled with some extras.
• Johnstone Metzger (Nightmares Underneath) has been releasing a series of weird, wacky fantasy & scifi bestiaries and now they’re all bundled together.

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Hello, dear readers. This newsletter is written by me, Thomas Manuel. If you’d like to support this newsletter, share it with a friend or buy one of my games from my itch store. If you’d like to say something to me, you can reply to this email or click below!