Well, well, well . . . look who it's
Oh, you must be lost. You almost certainly didn't mean to come here; you probably meant to click on one of those TTRPG design blogs written by good designers that actually know what they're talking about. It's okay, I understand, I make mistakes, too. You know, like that one time I decided to start a blog about my attempts to design TTRPGs. Huuuge mistake.
I know, I'm hilarious.
Okay, now that you're fully enamored by me and my super fun and hip writing style, you are primed for the TEDx Talk I have prepared to describe a TTRPG idea I've had itching at the back of my skull for several years now. The goal of this blog is to spread that itch to the back of your skull, or at the very least, to keep you apprised on the developments being made to placate and appease my itch.
The Problem (AKA, the niche.)
Has this ever happened to you?
"Ah, nuts. I really really wanna play a roleplaying game with my friends, but it would just never work! They're busy, and in another state, and they have bad wi-fi, so like playing online over just like a voice chat is really buggy and laggy and just generally not super fun for everyone... Whatever will I do?!"
Well, nondescript child-like character, do I have the solution for you! Introducing KINGDOMS IN THE BACKGROUND!* (*working title).
Yes, I'm very aware it's an awful title and even worse logo. I put it down one day in a document that needed a title and it just sorta . . . stuck. It's temporary. In later posts, I'll explain what that title means and where it comes from.
I'm feeling myself avoiding the job of actually explaining the game idea, so here it is:
A TTRPG specifically designed to be played asynchronously via instant messaging.
Let's break that down like a church youth group breaks down a Bible verse: by each word.
instant messaging
Okay, so this is "two words," whatever. For those in the know, this is equivalent to play-by-post, full stop. For those who took the seats all the way in the back and are just playing games on their phones, play-by-post, PBP, is a long standing tradition in the tabletop hobby of playing roleplaying games online, in post form, with historical roots in the forums and message boards of the early internet. Instead of meeting at an agreed upon time around a table or in a voice/video chat using something like Discord or Skype, PBP games have players driving the story by writing and posting what their characters do in a general online chat, and doing so whenever they have a chance in their day in leu of a game "session".
There is an excellent video describing the concepts of play-by-post here by Stuart Langridge.
"Whenever they have a chance" leads straight into. . .
asynchronous
This is probably the least familiar aspect by name, but will quickly reveal to be something that everyone is familiar with. It's certainly the one that's been behind most of the design issues I'm still grappling with for this game. It's a term I stole from my background in software development.
The basic definition is thus: not happening at the same time or place. Think of terms like "independent study" and "multi-threaded".
The best example is actually related to this game's use case: Say I send you a text:
The time you take to respond, or even read the message, is entirely up to you. Our communication is asynchronous, it's not happening at the same time, we aren't having a real-time conversation. Rather, our back and forth is split over a variable time frame. You can send me a message (or multiple) whenever you feel like it, and then I can turn around and do the same. It could be that I send you a response in 10 seconds, but it could just as well be 10 minutes, 10 hours, multiple days; different to a conversation in person or over the phone, there's a text-etiquette-based understanding that our communication is going to be segmented and stretched over the many smaller points in our lives where we are available to communicate.
You can map the ideas of sync and async to phone plans: Talk is sync, Text is async. Play-by-post games are built on the idea of async communication because that's basically all there is for posting online. Texting, posting on forums, commenting on YouTube videos, Discord messaging--that's all async.
I'm spending a lot word count drilling in a on a concept that the world at large already understands, just might not have the name for, because it's really important for the next word phrase on our agenda, the one that kind of ties to "async" and "instant messaging" together.
specifically designed
So you're thinking, "hey, the play-by-post thing sounds pretty cool. Maybe I could set up a PBP game with my friends who live a in <insert country across the international date line relative to you>. I was never able to coordinate regular sessions with them, but PBP could work!"
You're absolutely right to think that. It's been done, people have enjoyed their games thoroughly, you should give it go. You message your friends, they seem excited and interested, off to the races.
What game do you play? "How about D&D 5e? It's the one I'm most familiar with and my friends know it enough to be comfortable, too." Sure, let's zoom in on that:
You start in a tavern, you introduce characters, you explore the starting town, you talk to NPCs. All of this is going swell via messages, everyone is having a great time and you're getting to connect with those friends you haven't really talked to in earnest in a long time. Brilliant!
Now you're in a turn-based combat. It's the halfling rogue's turn and they haven't been responding for past few hours. You don't want to just skip their turn because their character was holding the special key that was going unlock the glowing door and save the day. On top of that, you don't want to just have another character take the key from the halfling because this key and this door has special significance to the halfling's backstory.
This parable is going a little long, so I'm just going to challenge you to extrapolate. A lot of systems breakdown slightly when played asynchronously because they rely on the concepts of turns and sessions. Trying to be absolutely crystal, there is nothing wrong with that, and there's definitely nothing wrong with people playing these games by post. If you have played D&D 5e by post and had fun, mission success! It's just useful as a designer to recognize that there are not a lot of games specifically designed to be played by-post and asynchronously.
Enter Kingdoms In The Background.
I want KITB to be that one game that's specifically designed for play-by-post. I want the mechanics and the themes to all work cohesively with the idea that the game will be played over texts, written with intention and an understanding of what async play brings.
Next Time On DADTTRPGTNWP
We'll work on that title for next time, too.
There's plenty more to talk about in terms of what Kingdoms In The Background is going to be. I mean, heck, I haven't even told you what it's about yet (here's a preview, "What if every player had their own nation?"); also, there's the whole concept of playing this game sidecar ("Oh me oh my, what could that mean?"). I think those will be the topics of the next two devlogs, and then after that foundation, we can start to go into mechanics, which is probably what you're here for anyway.
Speaking of being here, we should really find your parents. You've been lost for a while now and they're probably starting to get hysterical.