Steve Arnott
speaker
315 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Sep 2024
last heard Sep 2024
Steve Arnott’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Anyway, I think that is most of the news I have for this week.
There's one called the Mark Kenobi.
Well, we couldn't have that because of licensing issues with Disney, so that's the only reason we had to exclude that.
Always the rogue.
If people listening are interested, it is available on Tabletopia online for you to play. So then the rule book's all there. So if you want to play it for yourself, it's free to play on there. So you can check it out there. And of course, the Kickstarter is launching on Tuesday. So if you want to get an actual pretty physical copy of it or a print-to-play version, you can get that as well.
Because I always find Tabletopia is really great, but it always feels a bit more fiddly than playing in real life. Maybe it's just I'm not very good at using tabletop simulator type things. But anyway, but that's just me. Yeah, but I wanted, well, I suggested Mark to come on today because I found, because I'm not a board game designer or a tabletop RPG designer, writer either.
So I was wondering, because you both of you are doing both those things. I was wondering what the differences are, what the similarities are, what sort of cross learnings you take on that. So I was hoping we could kind of discuss that today. So I guess, I guess, so I was going to interview both of you, actually, if that's okay. Okay.
why not jess why not so i guess the first thing i'd say is like so when you're approaching tabletop rpg design what are the big kind of considerations and things or how do you start that process like and russ i don't know what what do you do for that i don't know you don't know it just happens
I didn't say what's the best way to design a tabletop RPG. I asked what you do.
Yeah, well, Mark, same question over to you then, I guess.
Yeah, I really like in tabletop RPGs playing a weak and rubbish character because I just think that's fun and you can play... Because you can find a lot of story in that and being the person that's not the most powerful in the room but still being part of an adventure is... You know, there's people out there that would be very, very angry with you for that.
well you're not putting your weight in the party you must have a fully optimised character no but I usually contribute in different ways if you think about like the hobbits in the lord of the rings they are not the strongest fighters they are not magic users but actually they they end up they pull their weight they do things So I like being the merry or the pippin in the party.
But anyway, but in a board game, if I had a character that had an unbalanced disadvantage, I would just find that frustrating and not enjoyable because I'd be like, well, I can't win. So yeah, I get that's the major difference with mechanical balance.
And I guess in Split the Horde, there is an element of luck because there's a horde cards and you flip them over and you get three cards and you get what you get. So there's an element of luck in there. So how do you try and balance against luck in a board game when there is an element of that?
But how, Russ, you're saying you're led really by mechanics. How do you like balance and test mechanics in RPGs? Because like Mark said, you can, because like Split the Hall, for example, takes like 20, 30 minutes to play. So you could sit for a few hours and play a few games. That's easy to do.
But to get people to commit to playing an RPG for a few hours, and there's obviously way more variables because they're not, parties rarely do the thing you want them to do. How do you do that?
What about you, Mark? Which do you find easier, or is that an impossible question because it's so variable?
Yeah.
When I'm running a tabletop RPG, I run my games very much on vibes. And so the rules are kind of there if I need them and I'll lean on them. But, you know, I sometimes, you know, I've run a session where nobody's rolled a dice once because we got really into the narrative side of it.
Board games, you can't really do that. The rules are the box you're in, and you can't ignore them and do whatever you want, because otherwise you're just not playing that game anymore.
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