Tilts (Or the Dangers of Sitting in an Armchair)

Tilts are one of the most essential parts of gaming, period. Every sports game I can think of has one in some way, shape, or form, and almost all indie RPGs do as well. So what's a tilt? Well, to be honest, it's a rule that allows for human interference. It's like "tilting" the foosball table when the ball gets stuck (or in general, if you're being aggressive), giving someone a penalty shot for being injured due to someone else's action, or giving a punt as a last ditch effort to delay the inevitable. It breaks into the "normal" rules of the game and allows for exceptions and outright defiance of fate. It's the human element that we all need and crave when we enter a game. We have to know that, should fate screw us over, we have recourse to what we all think of as "fair".

RPGs are a special type of game: they're entirely relational. Most aren't a competition, and even the ones that are are still much more relational than other types of games and require a degree of cooperation and camaraderie that's unique. In fact, if you asked me what I thought the point and purpose of an RPG was, I'd tell you that it was to have fun creating a good story. Since it's an intensely relational activity, it follows that the tilt of an RPG needs to be more relational, more human, and much more frequently invoked than in a sports game.

I'm going to give some examples of tilts from RPGs: The Burning Wheel Family, Misspent Youth, and Dungeon World.

The Burning Wheel family is filled with three types of tilts: fate, persona, and deeds points, all of which allow for the player to muck with the dice to a varying degree so the dice pool doesn't feel unfair. The BWFGs link getting these points to role-playing and driving the story, so your ability to tell the dice to screw off is directly related to your ability to play the game. It's an awesome cycle that will always be very near and dear to my cold, black, hate-filled GM heart.

Misspent Youth's tilts are the character traits themselves: if you're going to lose a conflict you can sell out a youthful trait and make it darker and worse so you can win. This completely shakes the game up and allows the story to go in a different direction. By fighting fate you make yourself just a little bit more like the darkness that you're fighting, which is incredibly appropriate to the game.

Dungeon World (and the rest of the World games) are a bit of a trick question. No, there is no real tilt like how there is in the first two games...wait... no... there is no tilt. At all. There is no fate defying stuff in Dungeon World (or the other games, if I understand correctly), and that game is incredibly fun, so much so that, whenever I get to reviewing it, it'll get a full recommendation from me! Wait, but I said... crap.

So what do I do? Dungeon World falls outside my model, doesn't it? It doesn't have a tilt and is fun. How the heck does that work? I guess I've got a few options. I could try and make Dungeon World fit my little philosophical system, start hating on Dungeon World, ignore it, throw out the system I've devised for y'all to read, or just admit that nothing's perfect. That maybe it doesn't really matter, long as you have fun with the product.

And ultimately that's what I guess I should take away from writing this little article: no system of thought about RPGs, religion, life, or anything's fool-proof, so you just gotta admit that you can't see the whole thing and move on. Tilts are part of RPGs, to be sure, and some of my favorite games have them. And some of my least favorite games do not. That doesn't mean that only good RPGs have tilts. Again, see the World games. So go out there, find a game you like, and have fun with it! You hopefully learned something from my aggressive rambling and it'll help you find a game that you like. Find it and have fun.

...but that doesn't mean I won't judge you if you like F.A.T.A.L. A lot. Like, really a lot. Seriously, if you like F.A.T.A.L. there's something wrong with you.

Another potshot at my own article: tilts are not ubiquitous amongst indie games. They happen more often than in mainstream games, yes, but they're hardly at saturation level. 

Journaling

Journaling isn't just something that you do in your little unicorn book to confide all your hopes and dreams. Oh no, not in the GMing hobby, no sir! Journaling is possibly one of the most useful things I've picked up in the last few years of gaming. It's a bit of work, but it's well worth your time. There's a few benefits to it: it gets the memories out of your head and makes them more objective, it helps focus the game, and it helps pull the group together.

The first benefit's pretty obvious: memory's a shaky thing at it's best. Any actual study into the nature of memory reveals just how quickly details shift around and get lost. Writing it down allows for you to not have to focus on remembering how things went all the time and frees you up for other things, like actually running your game! All your brain power can now be focused on making your players' lives hell just a little bit more... especially if you can get your players to help you journal on their downtime in-session.

Second, since you have it all written down, you can go and reread the whole thing, which has saved me from making making many a bad decision in the story department. All groups develop an overarching narrative and it can be kinda hard to see without being able to take a step back and read the whole thing, beginning to end. It helps the GM to realize what his campaign has actually been about the whole time, pulling him out of whatever fantasy world he's living in back to the reality of the situation he and the group have made.

Journalling helps pull your group together. It helps remind the group of where they've been and gives them a sense of scope of their own campaign. Too often campaigns become the source of people just letting off steam and they forget that they're actually making a story and that their actions have consequences in-story. I've watched as players' eyes go wide with comprehension at what they themselves did, only to go and do some incredible things in response to the recount of their own actions.

There's a lot more to it than that, but those are the basics coming from someone who's only just starting to get why journalling is such a good idea. If someone's got more experience on the subject and wishes to share, please comment below!

I'M BACK!!!

After a stupidly long hiatus due to bootcamp and then not having a computer that worked, I'm back! For all three of you who are reading, I shall return to my regular schedule of advice, tips, and play reports for all you beginning GMs.

ONWARD!