I see that many of you like frameworks, so here's my framework:

(You can see the original blog post with additional comments here.)

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In examining the political views of a game – particularly a roleplaying game – we can look at those elements that always exist in the medium: the premise, the action, and the presentation.

Premise

Whether a game provides a setting for you or expects you develop one at the table, it usually provides a premise. Unless consciously guided away from them, the premise is always built around the biases of the creators.

If there is a setting, we can quickly see the biases built in: Who are the leaders and citizens in this setting? Are there different races that are assumed to have inherent, perhaps monolithic personalities? Are there analogs to the real world, and how well do those analogs represent their real-world equivalents? Of course, if the setting is closer to the real world, then creators can’t help but reveal their social and political biases. Do they glorify or romanticize certain nations, policies, or historical eras? Do they gloss over the impact of certain events or individuals? These choices, whether conscious or unconscious, help foster the game’s particular world view.

If a game expects you to create your own setting, then it may offer guidance. Does it ask you to look at big picture effects of your choices or assume you will create an isolated framework of tropes? Setting creation guidelines almost always offer some constraints – what kinds of worlds and stories will this game NOT let you create?

Action

In nearly all roleplaying games, you generally want to do…something. The action might be physical, emotional, or conceptual, but you can expect to act, change, or grow in some way. Whether characters do the same thing repeatedly or a variety of things, those actions and their methods are another area where the game’s politics show through.

The actions themselves make assumptions about the world. Is violence common or uncommon? Is there violence against objects, institutions, creatures, or sentient beings? Are there consequences or rewards for conflict? Is conflict inevitable, or can it (always) be avoided?

In terms of methods, things like skills, moves, and attributes can say a lot about what is important to the politics of the game. Is strength favored over intellect, or vice versa? What abilities or practices does the game mechanize and what does it “leave to roleplaying?” Do the mechanics favor cooperation or individual action?

Presentation

The writing, art, and even layout might be limited by what is available to the creators, but ultimately there are still choices being made that say something about the politics of the game and its creators.

The language of a game book reveals creator assumptions about the game’s target audience. What terms and pronouns are used for the players and organizer? Is the tone formal or conversational? Does the game mention or assume player support practices or safety tools? Are there examples of play, explanations of design philosophy, or hacking tools? Does the text specifically suggest or proscribe certain play styles or activities?

Art can welcome and guide players, but it can also drive people away. Who is being represented in the game’s art, and how? Is there textual explanation for the art selections? What activities does the art depict, and does this correspond to the main activities presented in the text? Are there images that might be uncomfortable or even upsetting – is there textual explanation for those images?

Even the organization and layout of a game can say something about who it’s for. Is the text cramped and multi-column, or spread out and single column? Which chapters or sections come first, and which are given the most space? Is there indexing and/or digital bookmarking?

And the rest

There are so many other things that can tell you about the politics of the game. From broad concepts like the theme and genre down to something as focused as the maps – all of these contribute to the views that the game and creators are putting forward.

Good designers are aware of this and make these choices intentionally. But everyone makes choices whether they know it or not. When you’re reading or playing a game, try asking yourself these questions and see what message the game is giving you.

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So what are your politics, or the politics of the games you play? If you want an example, you can see my answers for Rockalypse, the first game I've brought here to Itch, on my website as well.

In terms of accessibility all the pawns, board etc are fit to print in A4 paper size for convenience. Overall the game can be played with 2-4 player pieces and 10 more pieces for each player (all the same shape, just different colour).

However I was wondering how much time and effort are people actually willing to put in terms of cutting and gluing each for the whole project?

• Should it be easy to craft so people can just focus on the gameplay, ignoring the aesthetics?
• Should it be something with basic geometric shapes that also looks aesthetically pleasing, which will require some time to craft?
• Should there be two seperate formats where 1 is for the people who just wants to play and the other one visually more appealing but needs more effort to craft?

I am also open for any other suggestions,
thank you!

Is it really that bad? One thing that's worth considering is that it's not unheard of for people's perception of a problem to be at odds with reality. For example, it's a well-documented phenomenon that people can believe that crime is rising in their city when it is fact falling. Things like sensationalized news stories can give people a sense that something is a big problem even if, statistically, it's not. Are RPG Theory discussions more toxic or acrimonious than other types of discussions? Do we have any data, or are people mostly working from gut feeling?

Status Quo Maintenance: The perception that RPG Theory talk is toxic tends to discourage new people from participating in the conversation, while those with high enough status to avoid criticism can still talk about it if they want. This can reinforce existing status hierarchies, for good or ill.

Moralized Language: We know from politics that incendiary or moralized language can lead to increased support from supporters and increased anger from enemies, so it's not surprising that politicians and commentators lean on it much more than nuanced, thoughtful analysis. A similar pattern can happen in theory talk.

Trying to win arguments rhetorically rather than analytically: A lot of notorious RPG Theory topics seem to be associated with particular turns-of-phrase or wise-sounding aphorisms. These sort of things might be more prone to causing breakdowns in discussion than analyzing things on the merits.

Taxonomy may be a questionable approach: A common theme in some RPG Theory approaches is to "taxonomize" various things, such as GNS Theory's attempt to classify a series of "Creative Agendas" or Robin Laws' player-types. While putting things into categories or affixing labels isn't always intrinsically harmful, it runs so closely to insulting people or establishing hierarchies of value that it can often slip into that, either intentionally or unintentionally. Additionally, there's a risk that affixing labels can cause an illusion of explanation: if I say "the reason you have an intense fear of spiders is because you have arachnophobia" it looks similar in form to an explanation, but actually doesn't do any of the work of one -- you've just put a name on the phenomenon. Rather than trying to taxonomize things into groups, I suspect an "anatomy first" approach -- where the effort is to understand how particular games (or games in general) work -- probably leads to fewer hard feelings.

Bad Theories: It's not clear that there's much value in some of the past theorizing that occurred. There's definitely some that I personally think led to wrongheaded dead ends. As such it may seem like a low ROI activity to many, and may seem worth frowning on regardless of whether it is actually toxic or acrimonious.

Conflicting interests: Being seen as an expert on how games work is probably beneficial for a game creator, so there are a lot of incentives besides "is this true?" that can be in play when people pontificate about Theory. It's hard to be aware of how your own biases can distort your perception.

Psychology: People who post about RPG Theory are just as susceptible to things like Confirmation Bias as anyone else.

Those are some of my initial thoughts.

Over the years, i've toyed around with different ways of dealing with uncertainty, with chance resolution, and with challenges to a character's actual abilities toward what the player is attempting to do; however, I haven't really seen anything or come up with anything worth while.

One might point to Amber's diceless system or to Nordic LARP as a shining beacon of immersion over systemic representation, but those are extremely specific and contextualized instantiations of things not like other RPGs. Most of the attempts feel foreign. It may be that you cannot escape dice if you want a game to feel like a ttrpg. 

Do you have a favorite resolution system that doesn't rely on dice, cards, coins, points, or other forms of those things?

Thanks for taking the time to read!

As I hope to make more gamebooks like that, a simplified version is in order, and after some thinking figured out how the stats should work. Not so much combat. Guess I need to read more about similar systems, but they're relatively uncommon.

Please recommend me some RPG rule systems where enemies are treated like static difficulty targets to roll against, rather than active opponents that hit back on their own, casting spells and whatnot. Right now the only one I can think of is D6 Dungeons. (Edit: preferably free because right now my disposable income is rather small. Apologies.)

If it helps, my new system will also deemphasize gear, in order to simplify coding: heroes will be more likely to have a signature weapon than finding semi-disposable loot in every hole. Was thinking to maybe add fancy moves / techniques for them to learn and improve, so as to make combat spicier and provide a progression system at the same time, while not bogging things down with levels or stat increases.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Right now my ideas about this are somewhat muddled; sorry about that. Ask if you need details.

As a practical example, here's some rules I wrote up on how a GM could run a "GM Turn" between sessions of a Forged in the Dark game. I wanted to be thorough, designing it as a sort of mini-board game, but now I'm wondering if having so many rules devoted to the "lonely fun" of preparing a campaign will turn potential GMs off. As usual, any feedback / criticism is welcome, though they're mostly included to illustrate my larger point about Prep.

But that's where I get to a my dilemma: As we all know, to ensure the game you write is a good game you have to playtest it again and again... However, I don't know I will be able to deal with the emotional load of playtesting it to shred. 

So have you ever had a game that "pained" you but that you HAD to write/play/playtest? 

Tyrannoeil aka the French Beholder

I'm curious about people's thoughts: what makes a solo LARP a game? What distinguishes it from a guided meditation session or ritual?

Most games are full of mechanical tools and guidance - advice for how to build an encounter, how the numbers work, why things "cost" whatever they do, etc. These are, in many ways, the foundation of our hobby, but as a fundamentally storytelling medium, the other side of the coin is often missing - games very rarely explain how to weave the narrative they're designed for. Missing are lists of tropes, explanations of important narrative beats, character archetypes and where/when/how to utilize them to create the arcs and stories that these games seek to enable. These are largely left to the reader to figure out for themselves.

There's a few reasons for this - page count can be a big problem when publishing and these ideas are often seen as extraneous, it is often assumed that players will be genre/media savvy and able to construct narratives without any aids, but I think this is a bad assumption to make, especially if the goal is growing the hobby - we don't assume every reader has read an RPG before, we shouldn't assume every player is familiar with Red Herrings, properly structured Climaxes, particular kinds of characters and their roles in stories. There's also an issue with games aiming to be as generalized as possible - even when unintended many games tend toward the "You can tell any story with this game!" style of thinking, which isn't inherently a bad thing, but does create a number of assumptions.

This leads me to Platonic Sessions - I'd argue every game (even explicitly generalized systems) has a platonic session, a perfect game that exists only really in the designers mind during development. This session may change, it may be more than one session in practice, but every game has, deep inside of it somewhere, The Game that those mechanics and narrative choices are being designed for. Understanding what this platonic session is can be a powerful tool for a designer for a number of ways, but the reason it ties in here is because understanding the platonic allows you to better explain to the reader how exactly to go about crafting those narratives - by understanding that your cyberpunk game's platonic session involves, say, corp heists, you can better identify which tropes and beats to communicate to the reader - either via explicit means (a chapter on narrative guidance) or implicit means (mechanics, lore, etc).

Short games and Story games tend to be very very good at Narrative Guidance - either directly telling the reader "this is what you should do during a game" or being designed such that the only game possible is as close to the Platonic as you can get irl. They still tend to lack overt explanation of narrative design, but they still achieve fundamentally the same goal through implicit means.

About as close to narrative guidance tools most games get is including a list of influences, like movies and books and the like, that influenced the designer, or a preamble that roughly explains the same information. This speaks to me as a sign people understand the need for some kind of narrative guidance but simply telling people your game is inspired by Firefly isn't enough - what elements of firefly? what narrative beats and tropes does your game seek to replicate? Why? How can a reader best use your game to craft their own narratives?

Including more Narrative Tools in games would help build the hobby, help build up new GMs and give readers a wealth of information to have better games using your systems. Give it a whirl!

For people who have participated in or run Actual Play games—how do the principles of play change when you're running a game solely for yourself, versus for a closed group of friends, versus for an external audience? To what degree do elements of "traditional" performance (directing/acting/improv/etc) make their way into your games? For people who are running those games, or for those who just watch/follow them—how does your notion of play change or morph when your audience is following the game live, versus engaging with it after-the-fact?

What would drive you to include name lists in your games, or to not? If you do decide on name lists, what should go into them? Specifically, how do you go about making those lists for different types of characters, if they are differentiated like that? Do you order names alphabetically, or some other way?

This seems like an aspect of design that could become invisible, but has a lot of implications for a game. Many names imply certain genders, races, and cultural backgrounds, which implies who is envision as belonging in a certain game. I don't have any answers here, but I would be interested in hearing more people's thoughts and design processes.

My Assertions: Traditional RPGs aid with very little of this, but good prep can get you a "gift" that trends this way, and an antagonist that's ready to make these moves. Also, it's likely that (4), again, will feel railroaded unless prepped with care, might be taken badly and won't prompt a "personal growth" point, and the action taken/"their terms" will be violence (and the more traditional the system, the more likely it'll be violent). Low points and reversals being growth points is a thing - a mechanism for "the bigger the hit, the bigger the potential growth" seems like a clear thing.  Moving into (5) might do well with a "mentor" npc that tries to teach them to do it "properly" early on, but comes around to "I was wrong; let's do it your way" after (4).

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3. THE COMEDY
So, this one (Oscar, Midsummer night, etc) is... Different.

1. A series of characters are introduced, many of whom are largely out of alignment with the world. They are with the wrong partners, trying to be something they can't, not in good family setups, and so on. They are dissatisfied.
2. Their dissatisfaction leads to them calling in or going out to some agent of chaos - or, by distraction and conflict, mistakenly turning something into an agent of chaos (grabbing wrong bags, say).
3. The agent of chaos causes an atmosphere or domino effect of things falling apart, or circulates and disrupts, or multiple such. Things get slightly ridiculous.
4. Things get bad or weird enough that under the pressure, the misaligned setups the characters cling to come apart (sometimes explosively). This is largely portrayed as worse chaos; it tends to the ridiculous or horrible-seeming, or both.
5. In the chaos, one or two things that were out of alignment come into alignment via realizations, amends, and so on. These prompt other wrong things to be set; realignment spreads.
6. The chaos comes to an end, whether by coming to a climax, being overcome by the realigned characters, or otherwise.

Assertions: Putting this into an RPG in mechanical terms as something that will emerge from play would likely require relationship traits that can be overwritten, and some evident "good state" they can be shifted into. I have never yet seen a game suited to generating this; but I believe it'd be possible.. Turning Fiasco inside out might do it; it's the closest I know of.

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4: THE TRAGEDY

Always a classic....

1. The protagonist is described as having some strong desire, often related to power or position.
2. To obtain this desire, the protagonist takes some terrible action (which includes striking a nefarious deal).
3. The desire is fulfilled! All seems well.
4. Problems (internal and external) with the desire or resulting from the bad action slowly appear; further bad action is taken to resolve them, but they don't resolve well and/or spin out more problems.
5. The problems resulting from this badness connect - enemies form a side, visions cause public outbursts in front of those already suspicious, and so on.
6. The unified problems come for the protagonist, to defeat said protagonist. The protagonist may escape through suicide, face their fate, or attempt to escape the tragic end (they sometimes do escape, to prove some point about forgiveness or some such; blech).

Assertion: Traditional RPGs have all the tools for this to occur, but it only occasionally does; players flee the possible plot as it emerges and GMs often help with this. But if the group is up to go there, traditional mechanics don't push back on it.

5. THERE AND BACK AGAIN

Something you'd expect RPGs to be great at: The Hobbit, Alice in wonderland.

1. The hero is portrayed at home as vulnerable or incautious. They may be small, naive, curious, etc.
2. By some device, the hero is pulled into a strange new (part of the) world. They must perform some task or seek some exit to return home.
3. For a time, the new world is relatively wondrous, though not without challenges.
4. The wonders of this new world darken and the challenges intensify; a singular dark power takes precedence.
5. The hero is taken (or goes into) the clutches of the dark power, where it becomes plain they cannot defeat that power alone.
6. The hero escapes the dark power in some daring fashion; they bring out with them knowledge or treasure or personal growth (or all).
7. The hero passes on what they have gained or learned to the aid of those opposed to the dark power, or otherwise weakens that power by the escape itself (which folds 7 into 6). Confusion and realignment occur in the new world.
8. The hero returns home, often somewhat changed, grown, and enriched.

Assertion: So, this plot seems like it should be both easy and potentially natural for traditional tabletop play, so long as the players don't carry the assumption that they can fight any enemy presented.  It fails as the emergent story for many because it ultimately makes the hero the critical factor but does NOT provide a power fantasy, which players are commonly expecting and seeking (even if they don't mean to), and which systems often aim to provide.  

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Last assertion:  RPGs as traditionally set up are really really good at creating narratives; they're actually pretty bad at generating satisfying plots.  They do mechanistically ok on Overcoming Evil, except that they tend to fall flat on the "personal growth and development side", substituting in "MOAR POWER" for that.  (Aside:  A lot of them also construct their "Evil to be overcome" in colonialist, racist, and otherwise befuckered ways, but that's not so much a plot-generative issue as a "the material that's grabbed first for this plot is often shit".)

Anywaaaaaaaay.  Your thoughts?

https://goatsongrpg.wordpress.com/

Let's start with a glossary of “Kinds of fun”.  It's not complete by any stretch, but here we go:

AGON is the thrill of winning against another person at the table. This is not quite the same as beating a challenge, or about winning against difficult odds; it’s about beating the other people at the table. It’s not the most common joy of RPGs - in fact, a lot of gamers want to avoid it, since problem agon is really, really bad stuff. But it does sneak in. When the GM takes on the role of adversary, playing not just to embody the challenge fairly, but in an attempt to whup the players, that’s agon. When a couple of players engage in creative one-upmanship, trying to spout the coolest thing (in theatre terms, trying to upstage each other rather than collaborate), that’s agon again. Agon can be good, but only if it’s acknowledged and used, rather than festering quietly.

ALEA is the gambler’s thrill - the fun of taking a big risk, the tension that comes with it, win or lose. Games with dice rolls, and especially ones where big stakes are riding on that one throw of the dice, are good at giving alea.

CATHARSIS is a feeling of release that follows an intense or overwhelming experience. Not necessarily a tragic or traumatic experience, but usually an emotional one. Catharsis is served best by very particular kinds of phrasing in play - notably, talking in the first person regarding your character is often deeply helpful.

CLOSURE is the feeling that there is nothing more that need be done, and that the thing is finished. Closure requires resolution to whatever the matter at hand may be. This goal isn’t especially tied to any of the modes, but does require that either the GM make the in-character goals and end points clear, or that they actively listen to the players (in a way that often has some features like slow-moving collaboration).

EXPRESSION is the simple desire to be creative at the table; expressive players often spend plenty of time on description, might draw the characters, might write seriousbackgrounds (though big backgrounds also mark Kenosis and Kairosis)

FIERO is the feeling of TRIUMPH, of winning, of defeating a challenge, or overcoming adversity. People looking for that feeling are on the lookout for adversity – and they tend to want adversity where they can be partisan for their characters and the GM is actually playing against them a bit. If it’s not a real challenge, with real dangers, then there’s no payoff for a fiero-chaser. If you’ve ever died again, and again, in a computer game, and then finally manage to succeed, and felt a rush where you could stand on your chair and scream? That’s fiero.

HUMOUR… Games can be played for laughs, and often are. A player that really pushes for humour will often end up pushing for collaboration, even to the point of attempting to dictate the actions of other player characters, because some of the humor that comes to mind most easily can step outside the specific ideas of “who is in charge of what" often setups lay down.

KAIROSIS is the feeling that of fulfillment that comes when an arc of fictional development completes – a character is tested and changes, a situation grows more complex, and is then resolved, and so on. Actively seeking kairosis often means authoring, though it may only be authoring certain details relevant to you (revealing yourself from stunt-level disguise in Spirit Of The Century, picking out character developments from Fallout in Dogs in the Vineyard). If you find yourself saying "that was a good ending to that bit", you're probably experiencing Kairosis.

KENOSIS is the feeling of being deeply engaged in their character or in the fiction as a whole; it’s one version of “immersion”. Players looking for this (especially really serious kinds) often aim for a lot of characterisation. They also often (but not always) want to avoid types of collaboration that will pull them “out of the groove”. Serious kenosis is one of many “flow states” that goes on in tabletop gaming.

KINESIS is tactile fun. Miniatures, maps, game book illustration, tokens, and dice are all visual and tactile things that are enjoyable about RPGs. I haven’t yet met anyone that considers these things their number one priority, but it ranks in the top five things for quite a few.

LUDUS is for people who take their rules seriously. The tinkerers and the optimal builders are chasing this kind of fun. To someone looking for ludus fun, the rules are the game, a toy that the group is here to play with. Wherever the mechanics of the game are, whatever modes they attach to, that’s where ludus-seekers go. In order to support ludus, there needs to be enough complexity in the rules to allow someone to actually spend time exploring and playing with them as something interesting in their own right. D&D and Exalted both tend to satisfy ludus-oriented players.

NACHES is the enjoyment of seeing someone that you have taught, or are responsible for, go on to do well with that knowledge. If there’s a player at your table who is always happy to teach the others about how things work, chances are they like their naches. Many GMs, unsurprisingly, get a lot of good naches and enjoy it. Some players can get this same kind of enjoyment from seeing a student or smaller ally of their character do well.

PAIDIA fun is free-wheeling player fun, where rules are a convenience. Players looking to get some Paidial fun would prefer winging the rules-calls, going for whatever feels right at the moment. If there are involved adversity-resolving rules, Paidial players avoid adversity. Novelty and wonder are often, but not always, associated with this goal. Goofy characters are sometimes signals that someone wants this kind of fun.

SCHADENFREUDE is delight in the suffering of another - the thrill of seeing the villain get what they deserve is a pretty common expression. A game session can only provide this really well if it has characters that players “love to hate” and whom they inflict real damage (not necessarily physical) on without serious guilt.

SOCIABILITY is pretty central. For most gamers, the game and the acts that make up “playing the game” are a way of being social (for others, the event is also – or only – an excuse for being social outside of play). People looking to get especially significant gameplay-as-socialisation often try to match their other goals with the rest of the group, but do want to chat in general –if they aren’t engaging in characterisation, they will often enjoy general table talk.

VENTING is, simply, the desire to work out player frustrations or other emotions, using the game as a means. After a rough day working, smacking the hell out of some monsters can be pretty enjoyable.

Feel free to chop this up or have a go at it. I've been bouncing this idea around for a while in my head, and while it probably isn't perfect, I think it's probably about the right mark? Anyway, bash it around and see what falls out.

The Layers

1. The Story of the System Itself
2. The Story of the "Long Game Story" (e.g. Campaign)
3. The Story of the Players as Players
4. The Story of the Characters

Story of the System

For the pithy one-word thing this is "Ludonarrative".
D&D wants to tell stories of kicking open doors, killing stuff, taking stuff, and repeating that. Blades in the Dark wants to tell stories of Heists going wrong, that maybe involve a fair chunk of failure. Punk systems (particularly Cyberpunk) generally want to tell stories of the underdog battling the systems of the world around them to reshape the world into a place where they aren't outsiders.

Basically, games have a story that they tell well by the structure of the game. What the game finds important enough to detail feeds into the stories it tells.

Story of the Long Game Story

This is what would be called a Campaign, or Series, or similar. This is often the story set up by the person taking the Referee/Umpire/GM/DM chair. Maybe there are other ways it is done if there are GM-less games that have long arcs that span multiple sessions.

Story of the Players as Players

This is one of the very very social parts of an RPG. This part is in many ways absent in a GM-less game, but can't disappear completely while you still have someone playing a game.

This is where people would talk about the stuff they did in the game. It's that story. It's the story of "My friends and I sat down with made up people and did stuff, and that stuff was this and that and it was fun..." you get the idea.

"We played a band of heroic types who slayed dragons and saved townspeople!"

"We were a bunch of society's outcasts who banded together, and overthrew the man to try rebuild the city from the top down!"

"We are courtiers around the king, and we manage to convince the king to avert a few different crises during this, got some other nobles in line, and probably prevented a civil war for another year."

"We sat down and has most of our people die as we tried to survive the winter".

Story of the Players as Characters

This is the story of the PC as told by the Player.

"This is Dave, he's a wizard in Neo Hong San Tokyo who is on the run from his previous employers for freeing a bunch of slaves out of an abusive factory. He did it by...  Dave wants to bring down the company because they're abusive and exploitative and Dave's had enough."

"Liz is the third courtesan to the Emperor and is pretty sure the Empress wants her dead. She needs to survive this, and maybe if she does she'll end up one step up. Survival first, gaining rank second."

Why care?

Players can complain about games because two of these, or maybe more of these, pull in different directions.

Your game system might be setup to tell gritty combat, but the setup for the long-run narratives talks about spies, assassinations and court intrigues.

Your long-run narrative might be setup to talk of heists, espionage, getting out by the skin of your teeth, but the Players are really wanting less Action Movie and more Period Drama... so heists and pulp action isn't going to cut it.

The Players you have really want to play interpersonal diplomatic conflict (Yay! A Diplomacy group!) but the game you have on hand is... D&D. Those are going to clash.

The character really just wants to be a pacifist and help the poor. In a "Story of the Game" which promotes espionage and assassinations, that won't work. In a Long-Run Game which is based on courtly intrigue, that won't work.

Why care as Designers?

I think it's important that we make it obvious the kinds of stories our games are set up to tell (if we aren't aware of it already) and maybe the times when people don't like our games, is because we have clashes forming between these layers.

Blades in the Dark won't tell the same Stories as For the Queen or Shadowrun. You can try maybe "Ship of Theseus" your way into hacking Blades to give you "For the Queen" but... why? Why not just play For the Queen?

You won't be hacking Kagematsu anytime soon to give you Conan Fantasy Pulp... it's probably not going to be a "smart plan".

And if your game at one layer isn't backing up the other layers, then maybe its something you need to change.

But I looooooove hacking (system)!

Okay, that's fine. Hack away.

Just know the limitations of the tool. It comes with assumptions built into it.

Not all knives are the same. Scalpels aren't bread knives aren't filleting knife aren't machetes.