IN FAVOR OF SHORT GAMES
"LET'S PLAY A GAME"
It is a beautiful morning. You are reading this brand new TTRPG just released, or finally got time for the one gathering dust in your shelf or download folder.
You hit up your group. Your current campaign has drawn out, you have not played for some months now. Or the last DM got a new job, things just fizzled out; the perfect moment.
You hit your group: I have this new shiny thing we can play. You want to try it out, but this has potential. It can be the Next Big Game for your table, you can feel it. The game comes with this hexcrawl baked in, or a dungeon or two. It's all coming together.
You sit down for a session 0, characters are drawn or built. You propose: let's play this adventure.
PLANNING FOR SUCCESS
Games like Alien RPG suggest: you can play one, sometimes even up to three games of this explosive, fast story, appropriately named Cinematic Play. You will probably die every session and play someone new the story will have waiting for you to pilot. Your characters will be fast to roll, or even premade by the adventure or the GM. Like its name, you are expected to think like Alien Movie protagonists: greedy, dumb, reckless.
It's a successful formula; the usual discourse around Alien RPG focus almost exclusively around Cinematic Play, no matter the 50ish pages right after it with Campaign Play: a dozen planets, different aliens species, Types of Campaign suggestions from being a space Trucker to a Full Colony Game, each with lists of suggested missions, hooks, ship customization. Every support you need to play until the fizzle comes.
But in the end of the day, it is a horror game. Brutal deaths are expected and enhance the experience. Similarly, Mothership RPG also has a strong pull towards the model: grab an official booklet with a story, play it until everyone dies or becomes insane, done.
On the opposite end, you have games that help you plan for the long run. Compared to the one page on oneshots, Daggerheart explain in great detail how to do long term play, as they call it: your Plot A can start to intertwine with the following Plot B that will come right after it, and maybe we can do a couple of sessions that introduce Plot C between arcs so it will feel like a good foreshadow when we get there next year.
WAIT, NEXT YEAR?
The proposed sessions in that section of the core book shows some arcs of 3 to 4 sessions, totalling 11 games. If a group plays once every two weeks, or once every month, we just locked in 5 months at its best, to 10 months in a low frequency of play. Even a weekly table will take three months of gaming every week, not counting any cancelations, for the first three arcs.
They also go in length on making story beats and arcs, building the story unto characters and their backstories, even suggesting as little as 3 and as high as 10 sessions between levels, which the system has 10 of; a whopping 30 session game for a level 1 to 10 on their lowest expectations. Daggerheart tells you how to structure its campaign, and it clearly has an opinion on how long it should be.
Mythic Bastionland also suggests three different scopes (from its freely available quickstart pdf):
We can see the same DNA from Cinematic Play here on Adventure. Premade Characters, a single session, but little else; no best practices, no different principles of high lethality and recklessness - there is, however, a blog post from the author outside of the book giving tips and tricks to make your Adventure work.
That is because the Mythic Bastionland book doesn't spell it out to you, but it infers: you should play a Saga.
Here's how you make a map that has neverending problems to be solved, here's some rules on how to grow old and leave a legacy and train squires, this is how you grow in power and become a ruler, and most importantly, here's how you advance time in seasons and full decades. The Saga, be it written or not, is the suggested approach to extract the most out of Mythic Bastionland and your realm and knights, for most of the game extra systems need time to develop and shine. Even the aforementioned blogpost calls the full realm development the most authentic experience - and expect the oneshot to simply work its way into making the players keep playing.
And right there, in the middle between Adventure and Saga, the ugly duckling Chronicle. There is not really any structure for the proposed passage of time; if the players stop a session right before a battle, do we timeskip anyway? What happened to the Myth we were exploring? How many myths should I use on my map, and what size should it have?
These are questions that are mostly answered, but for Adventure Play, in Chris' blogpost. These are also answered by the book for Sagas. Just like Alien RPG, MB proposes a form to either 1 (one) game, or any number of games.
Does this mean the game is only playable like this or that? Well, no. The game can be played any way you want, after all. Kill the author, by all means. But the system favors a scope of play by giving you more or less tools to drive that story in different levels of depth or required continuity.
Or maybe a game doesn't even click in short bursts. The most recent and popular example is Stonetop, a game that thrives on longterm campaigning. Can you play a oneshot? I am sure. Will you extract most of the game? I doubt it. Is the game core loop, its intended experience, easier to extract, or even more supportive of long term play? Yes.
PLANNING IS FOR SUCKERS
Not every table finds the need to work this out beforehand, though.
Don't get the wrong idea. The Scope of Play structure in any game is a major advancement from no scope at all. If a book feels its game shines better in a single sitting of explosive gameplay, or a long emotional journey like Stonetop, it's an improvement for them to actually suggest it, instead of the usual implication trail it leaves behind.
But books like DND 5e, albeit easily criticizeable for its lack of support for starting games, don't concern itself with helping any scope at all (even if the book, similarly to MB, also suggests playing an endless game).
Into the Odd, by going back to the roots of the original TTRPGs, expected the players to delve into a hole, find some loot, bring that loot back up into better stuff, and find the next hole or hook, usually in the form of modular stories that could guide an adventure for some sessions, open and shut. It works similar to Mothership, except some of the characters are expected to survive to the next booklet.
As OSR games usually don't expect a intertwined narrative arc, or backstories tied to the plot, or any of the neotrad interests, games can be 'unplanned': your group of adventurers got together whenever someone spent five bucks on a adventure, or the sandbox takes you to a new adventuring site. It took as many sessions it took, either diverging from the structure or keep on suggested lines, and when it was over, it was over. Next book, next location, next adventure, next problem.
WE'LL SEE HOW IT GOES
And well, truth is, planning sucks. Planning is boring. We have so little time to play between jobs and responsibilities and other hobbies, we can't spend a whole day of gaming organizing how long it will be. Let's just stab some goblins! No one cares Billy is leaving for summer break in 2 months. Or that Jimmy is expecting a kid by october. We sit, we start, and we will stop just like the last campaign: when it slowly stops or the next shiny game shows up.
So you start. You do the base hexcrawl adventure from the book, or the starter module that comes with it, and by the time you get to the end, you already have some good hooks to keep going beyond the starter plot, or the next booklet. Your players are invested, and so another successful game happens.
Or you do the hexcrawl and the players dont really jive with it. The system is too diagetic; are we never expected to level up? You had a good time, but it doesn't feel like you played the Next Big Game. Onto the next one. Actually, Billy bought this new boardgame, maybe we can change it up for a month? The fizzle out comes early, the characters live on to their next story, one untold.
After all, how is that any different from planned Campaigns? Most will end by any other reason other than the end of the story. Life will get in the way of some sessions, it's a new year and you have a new job and schedule, your player is in a new timezone for his new college
It's either planning for failure, or just going with the flow. No other ways. Zero solutions. Nada.
IT IS 2022.
I am DMing a DND 5e campaign. After a introduction arc of 10+ sessions, the players choose their next goal, completing it around level 10. Most backstories are left unsolved, but it's as good storybeat as any: level 10 starts to become troublesome to prep to, players can teleport any possible location, covid lockdown is starting to end, and we need other activities. The campaign ends.
IT IS 2024.
I am DMing Alien RPG. My players are scattered and with no hard schedule. We structure an episodic play; adventures from 3 to 5 sessions where players can jump in and out and participate in those episodes they can.
At the end of it, after some 7 episodes of 3 to 5 sessions, I tied all adventures together into a final arc, that required all players to run so we could finish the campaign.
That took us 4 months to find a date, and we played for 8 hours to finish. The campaign ends.
IT IS 2025.
I am DMing Mythic Bastionland. I set a realm, 6 myths, and a little more development for character backstory than usual. We play 5 to 6 sessions until the players resolve The Order in a huge battle, an inch away from a TPK. The players report fully diagetic progression is not really their thing; the game is fun, but myths can be too random. They want to keep playing, but out of interest for the story, in spite of the system. I sunset the game. The campaign ends.
IT IS 2026.
I am DMing Daggerheart. Character backstories are done to the fullest. I plan an adventure to introduce some new players to TTRPGs, and some major arcs for long term stories. I make sense of the scaffolding given by the core book into different goals in short, medium and long term.
5 months later, I am writing my own TTRPG and need to playtest it. I have a baby on the way. I don't want to kill the campaign. It's marked for death. The campaign will end.
WHAT ABOUT 2023?
I am first seeing the world of TTRPGs beyond dnd 5e. I meet Mork Borg, and want to run it. It's the first year after the heavy lockdowns, everyone is doing all they can to not be inside anymore. I decide to run short stories, explore a handful of different systems, adapt to the players available. People are around for specific months, or windows of time, so games are planned to begin and end in expected number of sessions.
We play Primal Quest, a beautifully designed and written stone age weird fantasy by Diogo Nogueira, for 5 to 6 sessions. An improvised story over the given hexcrawl.
We play Mork Borg. The blacksludge basic adventure oneshot; Cross Stitch, twice. The Ziggurat hexcrawl with an improvised story over it. Overall, close to 10 sessions, from one shots to 5 session stories.
We play Forbidden Lands, two sessions of understanding a system too crunchy to just dabble in; a system that favors long term play with its tools, but beautiful and deep enough to try.
We discover Alien RPG, through Hadley's Hope corebook oneshot - the prologue to the game we were going to playing the next year, for 30+ sessions in Campaign Mode (a deeply undervalued way to play, with an amazing support system for it).
I discover Into the Odd. I discover Mausritter. I discover Shadowdark. I discover The One Ring. I discover Kosmosaurs. I play some PbP Monster of the Week. Masks.
The year 2023 showed me what the hobby could do. It made me look for modules. It got me into reading different rules. And the one thing that allowed it was:
SHORT STORIES
What was the last time you planned a character knowing it would see the end of a story? What was the last time you saw the actual, epilogue end of a campaign?
In short stories, we are not playing to see where it goes. We are playing for precisely 5 sessions, maybe 6 if it comes to it, and one more to learn the ropes at best.
No long term backgrounds for yearlong developments. Each character is born from session 0 with a problem to solve tomorrow. There is no keeping that one use item for later, use it now.
The illusion of "seeing where it goes", even if you do play only for a short time, pushes for preservation.
The shortness of oneshots manufactures - and incentivizes - carelessness and reckless behavior; the character is a tool for a day, a piece on a board like a meeple in your board, a bird laying eggs in Wingspan. It won't exist tomorrow.
A short, planned game means a story will be told. It will begin, and develop, and end. Your problems must be addressed, and yet your character is not disposable. It is the best of all worlds.
No more of that familiar sensation of the campaign that fizzled; of what it could have been, of stories yet to be told. My Daggerheart campaign will stay in our collective minds, a canceled show. Firefly will always be remembered with bittersweetness. Oh, A Song of Ice and Fire.
Short stories allow for structure. For decisiveness of theme, but non-disposible. They fill a niche between instant gratification and a lifetime investment. An obvious tool, yet underepresented.
NO SUPPORT, NO DISCOURSE
Some games help you play for a day. Some help you play for a lifetime. How many help you play for a story?
In TTRPG books, short stories are not given proper tools to help, nor the rules to support it: no tips for making character problems and themes to be solved now, no help on making a map that fits the schedule and agendas.
The same way systems can support one shots and long term play, systems should support Short Stories.
Because by supporting a short story, it goes beyond itself; it supports the existence of the scope. Yes, you can play a game that actually end with these rules - and even with many other rules - and it won't take a year. Yes, you can play a oneshot, but will it really allow our mechanics and ideas - or other game's mechanics and ideas - to flourish? Give it 4 games, two months of everyone's time and we can marathon this miniseries. This is no ten seasons and a movie: you don't live and die by this game. Heck, you should try the games that inspired the game. And others that maybe you will like even more!
And beyond the written books, even in the TTRPG discourse, the scope is disfavored; either just start playing and see where it goes, or play longterm, or actually a oneshot is great to know a group.
Look into the LFG section in your discord of choice. How many games are advertised to run a low and specific number of games?
ERGO
Short stories are a scope of playing TTRPGs negleted by the spheres that make the scene. Books don't address or support it, and the discourse's best recommendation for it will be a module, that will luckily play for 3 to 5 sessions.
It is a undervalued media size to create, develop and finish character stories and narratives, different from oneshots, campaigns and "we will see where it goes" alike. It's not a movie, nor a series with 5 seasons, but that banger miniseries you watched that left you awed and wanting for more.
It's a tool that can fill many blanks, but undervalued for requiring minimal realism and pragmatism: no, we won't play for years and years. No, seeing how it goes is not good enough.
How about just some 5 good sessions?