The Worst Jobs in the Weird

I’ve been catching up online with the early 2000s UK TV series The Worst Jobs in History. It’s been useful inspiration for coming up with a character’s former job in a fantasy RPG setting. The presenter Tony Robinson tries out the jobs, showing that many had revolting or dangerous aspects that aren’t always obvious. 

I imagine many RPG creators use this or similar sources in compiling lists of background careers for character creation. This is judging by the regularity with which gong farmer turns up anyway. Most lists are rooted in factual examples from history, which inevitably leads to a quite vanilla flavour. Lists often only provide a job’s title, offering little opportunity to embellish on this.

A Dungeon Delver's Weird Packed Lunch

It seems a good idea for the first step of character creation to set the tone for what an RPG is about. In my game, I’ve made this a weird meal and ale generator, to determine your character’s packed lunch for dungeon delving. It’s system neutral, so maybe of use to others too. 

1	Turnip	Stew
2	Coral	Flesh
3	Runt	Custard
4	Whelk	Pasty
5	Roach	Cake
6	Bean	Scrape
7	Eel	Mush
8	Pond	Paste
9	Mutton	Pie
10	Toad	Flan
11	Tendril	Sandwich
12	Tongue	Steak
13	Pike	Soup
14	Pumpkin	Tack
15	Boar	Pottage
16	Wyrm	Cubes
17	Vine	Shavings
18	Bat	Jerky
19	Swamp	Biscuits
20	Mushroom	Curd

Foreground Growth and Dialectical Growth

I’ve been catching up with posts on foreground growth at Bastionland.com. Foreground growth is an alternative take on character development put to work in RPGs such as Into the Odd, Electric Bastionland and Cairn. It’s a principle I'm finding dovetails nicely with a materialist approach to gaming, serving to ground character development within the gameworld.

Foreground growth seeks to subvert the abstract style of class advancement you get in D&D. Instead of a magical metamorphosis occurring in downtime, development of your character is based on events in-play. For any character ability, players should be able to relay a story from a game session that explains its origin.

There is a good illustration of this in Cairn’s FAQs, in an extended descriptive example of gameplay. An unexpected encounter with a patch of bioluminescent water leaves a character with a foot that glows in the dark. This somewhat dubious ability isn’t found in a shopping list at the back of Cairn’s rule book, but emerges in the context of an adventure.

Fear my glowing leg

The Inverse of Cairn – Rogues as an Anti-Class

Cairn is a game by Yochai Gal that takes some of the principles I like about Into the Odd (ItO) and cranks them up a notch. I've described ItO as a materialist game in so far as the game world, via objects, plays the main role in defining your character. Cairn expands on this, making objects the basis to replicate the type of character differentiation you get in D&D.

Watching Yochai Gal’s actual play of Barrow of the Elf King showed me their commitment to objects defining characters. The adventurer’s gear is the basis for unlocking their backstory. The players are prompted to think about how certain items define them. Far more attention is paid to this, than some particularly low attribute rolls (I’ve argued for getting rid of attribute scores to emphasise this focus).

Cairn is self-described as a classless game. There is more role differentiation though than you get in ItO, as characters can effectively become “wizards” by filling their inventory slots with spell books. Unlike D&D, this doesn’t lock you into any career path. Characters can change their role in the party simply by switching out their inventories.

What then is the inverse of Cairn? Here I am going to suggest a way to define your character based on what you don’t carry. It’s empty inventory slots that influence your party role, rather than what fills them. As not having things is a pretty low bar to entry, I refer to this system as Beggar’s Choice.

Soulslike Bastionlike/Cairnlike Games

Someone may have solved the Soulslike TTRPG already. I might have missed it due to the sheer amount out of games out there (March seeing 2 separate Soulslike jams). To narrow down my search, I’ve been looking at an overlapping subset of these games – the Soulslike Bastionlike/Cairnlike Hack. That is, games seeking to emulate Dark Souls using Into the Odd’s auto damage rules as their basis.

Design Philosophies: Weapon Damage in Into the Odd

I’m a bit more comfortable with philosophy than I am with game design. One thing I’ve found though is that having a philosophical position can be helpful in making design decisions. Working on a collaborative project with Panic Pillow, I thought of a neat example of how a philosophical position has served me as a guide.

The part of the rules I’m working on was conceived as an Into the Odd (ItO) hack, but I wanted to treat weapons a little differently. In my first ever post, I talked about ItO as a materialist game, in that physical objects in the game world play the largest part in defining your character. But in later musings, I’ve realised there is more than one way to apply materialism to an RPG.