Processes in The Toxic Wood by Lazy Litch

This post is going to talk about RPG sandbox design. Sandboxes often have themes that makes them more than just a collection of disparate encounters. Some go further, in having a consistent process that effects all those within in a similar way. A module that I think does this well is The Toxic Wood by Lazy Litch. I’m going to suggest a variation on the approach in this hexcrawl, drawing on two theatrical plays as examples.

RPG Origins: Brecht’s He Said Yes/He Said No

There are a few reasons this Brecht play stands out to me for a post on the connections between RPGs and theatre. Firstly, it’s an important transitional work in the development of participatory theatre – a form that has much in common with RPGs. Secondly, it’s very short and freely available on the web, so short that you could probably read it the time it takes to read this blog post.

It doesn’t stop there. He Said Yes/He Said No (HSY/HSN) was itself adapted from a fifteenth century work of Japanese Noh theatre. That play, The Valley-Hurling, is even shorter (about 1000 words, available here). So you could read both, and see how made Brecht made this very conservative spiritual play “participatory”. And then separately, you could consider how Brecht’s participatory form relates to RPGs.

Obviously, you may not want to read or think about any of this. But the possibility of reading about a play and the play itself in a similar timeframe seems fairly rare to me.

Old School Gaming and Brechtian Drama

This blog talks a lot about materialism in role playing games, but I’ve not covered where these ideas come from. Before I got back into RPGs, I spent a decade trying to write theatrical plays. My inspiration then was a 20th century movement that went against the dominant theatrical form of the time. I must like to go against the grain, because it is the rebellious “Old School”(OSR) strand in RPGs that has felt like home here too.