Alexander 'Lex' Williams

Author, game geek, curator. Irritant.

From the depths of the cognitive void...

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

I suppose it's time to actually show people my work. Running Breathless is a game about being chased and dealing with problems along the way, sometimes not even your own.

https://t.co/evXE1B9mOD

Maybe you're a psychic kid who's escaped from the hospital or the school for unusual talents. Maybe you've made the heist of your life. Maybe you're the worst kind of criminal scum. Maybe they're right behind you.

Catch your breath when you can. Go to ground if you find someone you can trust or a big enough sucker. The one thing you're guaranteed to do? Run.

Running Breathless is a TRPG for one to five players, GM optional, based on the Breathless SRD.

Check it out. It's pay what you want, which means you can pay absolutely $0.00, and I won't be mad. In fact, I encourage you to do so. It runs pretty quickly, so you can even throw it up on the table while waiting for other players to arrive for your main game. It's fast, a little bit cruel, and you should have about 50-50 odds of getting away with it. Whatever it was you did. The chasers know.

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

That's my buddy. Sometimes he needs to be slapped around the head like any pseudo-younger brother, but even after a proper ass-kicking, he remains something worth keeping alive for entertainment value, if nothing else.

[TeapotSage @TeapotSage3]

It's Veterans Day!
I enlisted in 2007, which means next year i hit 20 years of service & can retire!

I'm currently E-6, which in the Navy is Petty Officer First Class. I have gold chevrons because I've never had a single NJP & a spotless record (I told you I'm a good guy!)

So, where have I served?

2008-2011: Sasebo, Japan
USS TORTUGA (LSD-46)

2011-2013: Jacksonville, Florida
USS VICKSBURG (CG-69)

2013-2016: San Diego, California
Southwest Regional Maintenance Facility (SWRMC)

2016-2021: San Diego, California
Coastal Riverine Squadron 3/Maritime Expeditionary Security Squadron 3 (CORIVRON/MSRON 3)

2021-2023: San Antonio, Texas
Naval Technical Training Center (NTTC) Lackland

2023-2027: Everett, Washington
USS GRIDLEY (DDG-101)

I have visited over 20 countries, including layovers in airports. I have set foot on every continent except Africa & Antarctica. I have proudly served my country, and I do not regret my service.

Go #Navy
Proud #Veteran
Happy #VeteransDay friends!

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

Exactly, that's a good example of simulation play. But here's the difference: when tabletop wargamers get together and play out the Battle of Shiloh on terrain, they don't do it in order to go through the exact same commands and the exact same outcomes of either of the commanders.

They do it to make different decisions and to see where the battle goes and how it changes, to see how the dice fall differently, if luck was part of what went into it, or whether they can do a better job, or they can fight their way out of a disadvantage.

Historical recreation gaming is typically all about the fact that things not only could go differently, but should go differently, and the point of play is to find out.

That's very much not what I understand the Japanese TRPG hobby to be doing with their scenarios.

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

That's fine. It's a perfectly valid statement of where the gaming community came from and why it had certain habits. Perfectly fair.

There are a lot of games which would be a better fit for the gaming habits they have than Call of Cthulhu, both mechanically and thematically. It seems very strange that they're obsessed so hard on sticking with a tool that they then complain about not fitting into their hands for the purpose they want to put it to, instead of finding a new tool that is designed to work with what they want to do, or designing their own.

There are plenty of beautiful Japanese TRPGs out there. The fact that this Galapagos mutant version of Call of Cthulhu is the thing that dominates the islands is just kind of strange.

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

I'm glad to hear it. Cthulhu Dark is one of my favorite Cthulhu Mythos games. It's fast, easy, lightweight, super streamlined, stays out of the way, and it does only exactly what the system should do, which is answer the questions in play.

It ranks pretty highly, so good choice on that one.

Interestingly, Lovecraftesque has never crossed my eyes before, which is bizarre since it's a GM-less game and that's generally my jam. Though I can see why it might not make it to my collection in particular. Being card-based is a little bit of a pain in the ass for me, but conceptually it sounds absolutely glorious, and it's nice that they have a print and play version over on https://t.co/5nVcGCBvNu.

I'll add it to my list of things to think about picking up at some point in the future. Thank you.

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

They're very crunchy mechanical systems which are focused on combat in particular, is what I hear you saying. I suppose that's a reasonable approach, but it would seem to be out of sync with the vast number of scenarios which are intended to be played one on one or 1v2, etc.

Games with an emotional component and a deliberate focus on romance or interpersonal relationships. Those don't seem like games that would be particularly useful for that kind of play.

We have games for that sort. Super lightweight mechanics that focus on what the characters can do and what the things they aren't very good at, that play very quickly and easily online because there aren't a whole lot of dice mechanics. Those things exist.

It completely blows my mind that they're not more popular in Japan and Call of Cthulhu or some sort of mutated offspring, is. It is absolutely boggling.

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

I've been exposed to two absolutely terrible "beginner friendly" Call of Cthulhu introductory scenarios from the Japanese TRPG community. As much as I'm disinclined to authority-centralized GM'd games, I'm tempted to write an actual introductory scenario that can be run in under an hour for the Japanese community, purely out of spite.

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

I think we have to judge it as a standalone work, and we can judge it as a standalone work. We don't have to judge it as terrible, but observation of it does demonstrate that it is objectively terrible.

It doesn't matter how old it is. It's bad. It's okay to point out that it's terrible.

For the record, I am a curator and have a vast collection of things to call on, but the Japanese CoC hobby, as I heard another member of the community call it, "a Galapagos Island," where weird mutancy has spread throughout the population because of a lack of connection with the mainland. I have become well aware of how TRPGs and the Cthulhu mythos were received at the time.

That doesn't keep it from being a bad experience, nor does it keep it from being suggested as a "beginner friendly" scenario, which is how I stumbled into seeing this horrific thing in the first place. Someone else pointed out that it definitely shouldn't qualify, and yet they hear it being suggested as a beginner-friendly scenario a lot. So I had to find out what they were talking about.

This is abyssal. There is no other way to put it. It's garbage. Not only is it not beginner-friendly, it's not anybody friendly.

It doesn't matter when it was regarded as one or whether it was created as one (at least one source says it was never intended to be a beginner scenario). It's a bad scenario.

Until people learn to be able to say, no, this is objectively bad, it's poorly designed, and it serves no real purpose in what it thinks it is, then you continue to get garbage, which it sounds like some people in the community would rather not have, and yet don't seem to see a way to do anything differently.

That's the thing that gets me, if we're going to be honest, given that Japan has produced some excellent RPGs over the last 40 years. That the dominant mode of play is not just Call of Cthulhu, but not even really Call of Cthulhu.

It's a mode of gameplay which is incompatible with the book as written, but the name of the book is so much more important than what's actually being done at the table that nobody has decided that they need a new game to play in a new way with a new name and thus created it.

You guys have Double Cross, Shinobigami, Tokyo Nova, Emoklore, and a whole pile of other games which do very specific things better than Call of Cthulhu does, many of which are what people are playing. Yet I don't hear people talking about Double Cross a whole lot, very rarely Shinobigami, almost never Tokyo Nova, almost never Emoklore, and certainly not Sword World, except to express the feeling that they miss it and wish they could play more of it.

You can see how that might be frustrating to someone who is an actual curator of games and who likes games. It's wasteful, which is not something I usually associate with Japanese culture.

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

Honestly, I'm curious, not just about what other people would do, but what I would do.

Things that I definitely think are beginner:
- Assumes that either the players or the keeper are new and have never done this before, and maybe both of them are.
- Teaches how to structure a scenario in the first place with a premise, a pitch, and a super light session zero.
- Introduces the players and their characters in a way that gives the players agency in deciding what kind of characters there are and what they can do. This may include light character generation.
- Gives each character real motivation to be involved with the situation, which is at least partially created and given to it by the player, so they have a reason to care.
- Has no secrets to hand out or anything concealed that the characters could or might know about, because that makes it more complicated to run.
- Describes an initial situation in which the characters find themselves and which demands immediate responses.
- Once play is started, begin with an investigation situation in order to ease the players into understanding how to interact with NPCs, how to interact with the world, and give them an excuse to use their skills and abilities.
- After a scene or two of investigation, move on to a scene of confrontation, which shows off how to manage conflict, not necessarily combat, though it probably would be, but conflict.
- Once the conflict is resolved, wrap things up with a denouement, which allows the players to talk about what happens to the characters after resolving the conflict and gives them time to reflect on what they've done.

I think that's the bare minimum that an introductory scenario needs to do, and I think it is barely doable within an hour, but hard. Along the way, a new keeper gets to play with the mechanics, gets told that they have to adjust to what the players do during the game and not just read them a script, and tells them what the things in the world will do if the players do nothing, rather than telling them what the things in the world will do if the players do something. That's the keeper's job to figure out.

That's where I'd start anyway.

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

I think that reproducing the play that someone else has flies in the face of what TRPGs are supposed to do and are designed to do, and define another kind of play, which is not a tabletop role-playing game, because you're not actually playing. Nothing you're involved in doing makes a difference to the state of the world or the state of the game. It's more properly described as a parlor game.

What it definitely is not is Call of Cthulhu, because it doesn't really have anything to do with the book or the setting, or any of the settings, or any of the rules.

Also, the idea of a scenario creator prohibiting a GM from making their own adjustments is ludicrous to me. A rule that is unenforceable reduces respect for all rules, unless the scenario creator has hired a kill team who will descend on the home of any table playing it in an unapproved way and burst through the windows. But as I understand it, those are really hard to fund and maintain in Japan.

Given how active this particular thread has been, I can only see that there is a large population of TRPG players in Japan who don't like the way things are currently constituted and would love to do something different, something that is truer to the idea of TRPGs, which is great. I'm deeply in favor of that.

There may be hope yet.

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

@entropy11 Congratulations! Now you can. :)

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

Okay, I admit that the first thing I thought when I saw this was that it would be an amazing tool for people that play RPGs online in whatever language you happen to use. You want notes to be conveniently made? Here you go. Happens automatically.

You don't even have to install anything beyond the application. That's kind of amazing, that it can then feed into whatever your choice of AI note taker is. That's great, but I'd settle for just straight up transcripts written out in a nice, neat way. Either way, I can see great uses for this.

Unfortunately, for most gamers, they probably can't justify $20 a month for more than three sessions. That is, if you play more than three sessions a month that you want Note taker to work for, you're talking $20 a month. $10 a month I can justify because I use Aqua Voice anyway. I'm using it right now, in fact.

But $20 a month is a little bit steep, even though I see the value-add opportunity for some of you. Though $20 a month for something that keeps excellent notes and connects to your storage systems is going to be an absolute steal, and I encourage you to play with the technology and find out how it fits into your workflow.

You have a workflow, right?

[Aqua Voice @aquavoice]

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[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

The country that made Call of Cthulhu in the first place has something to say.

Though I don't pretend to speak for the whole country. If I did, it'd be a nicer place to live, or at least more interesting.

I could reply, "The country that abandoned Sword World when they had a better TRPG than D&D thinks they have something to say."

That might be appropriate here.

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

I come from a long heritage of people who look at the world and say, "Yeah, that is really messed up. Let me fix it." Then we go off and do it. Often that involves telling people that they messed up and that they can do things better, and then showing them how they can do so.

I think it's fair to say from the thread and the interactions that have been had in it that I'm not acting without thinking. There's a lot of thinking involved here. There is reason and judgment. There is listening and observing that I've done.

I don't actually care about the divide. There is no divide as far as I'm concerned. There is doing something right and doing it poorly. If there is a greater divide between doing something right and doing it poorly, then I'm doing my job right, I suppose.

If your ideology rejects no one, your ideology has no purpose or meaning. It doesn't distinguish itself from any other mode of thinking. Rejection is part of judgment. Some things are judged good, and some things are judged as bad. That is the nature of judgment.

If your judgment rejects nothing as bad, you have no judgment.

I'm perfectly capable of and happy to write my own stories. I've been doing so for many, many years, but listening to all the class meetings over and over again, dealing with many of the same things that never have to be a problem.

Frankly, at some point somebody has to stand up and go, "Hey, stop screwing around. Why don't you actually try calling things what they are and using the right tool for the job you're trying to do? Here, let me show you what tools are here and how to do it."

If you never stand up and say something is wrong, then the wrong things continue forever.

Now, nobody may actually care what I write or think or do. That's okay, because the reason I stand up and speak and do things is because I think they need to be done. It would be nice if other people listened. Their experience would be made better, and their joy would be found more readily if they did so.

But if they don't, that's their lookout. But if I don't do anything, that's my lookout. That's on me. That's my problem. That's why I think about things and figure out what can be done and what I can do, and then I generally go do them.

Maybe this is a cultural difference. So mote it be.

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

The irony here is that I am anything but an original purist. If I were going to run a Call of Cthulhu game these days, I would stop, shake my head, and then pull one of several better games off the shelf, which are better suited to running things online, more modern game designs which are reactive rather than highly structured and passive.

I've written articles about comparative game design within the space. Even one last month was specifically about different approaches to sanity as they've been realized.

https://t.co/31oHMLPqzm

I believe that you should use the right name to talk about things so that other people actually understand what you mean. But I also believe that you should use the right tool for the right job, and you need to understand what the job is.

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

I certainly don't care what the majority thinks, whether it be in the US or Japan. I'm pretty sure everything I've written online for the last more than 40 years attests to that.

I would also like you to deliver the best scenario possible to Japanese Cthulhu Mythos TRPG players. In order to do that, you have to understand what the system itself rewards, understand what the system itself is limited by, and keep to a certain measure within that space. If you want to go outside of that space, you need a different system that does that better.

Just as though if you want to put a screw into wood, you don't use a hammer, you use a screwdriver.

I actually just want you to deliver the best scenario possible. I want you to use the right tools to deliver what supports the kind of play that you're doing, whether it's online or in front of a group of people at a table, and thematically appropriate, because when all of those things line up, you have a good game, and when they don't line up, you have a bad time and accidents followed by a classroom meeting that makes no one happy.

That's the key, honestly. Don't use Call of Cthulhu for things that aren't Call of Cthulhu. Don't call a thing Call of Cthulhu that's not Call of Cthulhu. Use a better tool for what you want to accomplish, and if it's not Call of Cthulhu, get people to sit at your table by telling them about the scenario and the situation, and then teach them whatever system is best for that.

But get them to come to the table not because you use the magic words "Call of Cthulhu" but because they want to play the game with you that you describe.

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

I do my best to talk about TRPGs all the time on X. Occasionally I wander off into other subjects, but I try to rein it in.

Nobody wants to hear about what I think about the world in general, and only slightly more want to hear about my work with complex AI harnesses and self-reinforcing learning, so — TRPGs it is.

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

Yet in the next breath, they'll be calling a class meeting to talk about all the ways that things went sideways and how you need to be careful to avoid accidents when they could have avoided accidents in the first place by not calling it Call of Cthulhu and using a system that's better suited to what they want to do.

I suppose at that point they'd have to get people to play on the basis of how they describe what they're actually going to do and not just use a name that means something else.

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

There's a difference between fun and torment. Those aren't even particularly well-designed, predetermined, pre-scripted experiences. They're just bad.

Moreover, it's fine to have different desires, interests, and pursuits, but don't call it what it isn't. Don't give it a name that it shouldn't have. If you want to act out someone else's predetermined plan, call it what it is: reading a play.

Don't call it a TRPG because it's not. There's no playing. There's just going through the motions with no decisions to be made and no impact to be felt. It turns what is intended to be an active experience, one that's engaging, into a passive experience like watching TV or a movie, except sometimes you say something, but what you can say is limited and what you can imagine is in a cage.

But above all, it's not playing Call of Cthulhu.

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

Which would ironically be fine if they were to create their own BRP system that is stripped down and better for playing those kinds of games and called it something else, or if they created an entirely new system and called it something else, or if they used one of the other hundreds, if not thousands, of games which are better suited to that kind of play.

But they insist on calling it Call of Cthulhu, which it isn't, except in the vaguest possible terms.

I think that's what bothers me the most, stealing the label of something that's not true. Words have meanings, and that flies in the face of the meaning of words.

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

See, here in the U.S., we've never heard of Chaos Flare, Emoclore, Futari Susa, Precious Days, any of those games. I only recently got my hands on enough of the text of Emoclore to do some machine translation, and I haven't had the time to go through it and really wrap my head around it.

The rest I've never heard of before in my life, and I'm pretty immersed in Western RPG collections.

We are only now getting close to a release of Sword World 2.5 in English, and that looks pretty glorious. It's a little crunchier mechanically than what I would run for myself, but I'm looking forward to having it on my shelf and in my collection.

We're looking at getting Wares Blade sometime relatively soon after, which is another game I'm looking forward to having in my collection. Those games have been out in Japan for a very long time.

Japan has some awesome domestically produced RPGs, and yet the biggest game available was written in the U.S. by an American and only translated to Japanese.

My gamer habits are to play and understand a vast number of games, so that I have the right tool for going after any problem that shows up, any kind of story that needs telling. I have the right tool in my bag to tell, but I'm old and geek. Does that make me a games otaku? I think it might.

[Alexander 'Lex' Williams @squidlord]

Fair enough, I think you're right. Your alien dungeon crawl should actually be alien. The things within it should largely be uninterested in you because you're human, and it probably shouldn't be wacky if it's going to be Call of Cthulhu.

My perception is that you're exactly right. CoC in Japan has become used as a kitchen sink TRPG. Dungeons and Dragons in the US for quite a lot of time has been the same thing. I don't think either of them treat the game well, nor the people who are using it as a kitchen sink, because there are games out there that do whatever you want to do better than either of those games.

Sometimes I think people just want to be able to say that they played Call of Cthulhu/Dungeons and Dragons, and not actually want to have played the game. The label is more important than the play to them.