Conventional TTRPGs and challenge stratification

One of the things that really bugs me in terms of world-building for a lot of conventional games is the improbable distribution of challenges available in the world for players to interact with. This is probably most egregious in video games (e.g., zones in MMOs), but a lot of established settings in TTRPGs suffer from this as well or have unlikely threats that arise seemingly out of nowhere or that delay over improbably long periods of time. Things nearby the starting city/town/kingdom tend to be low-level, manageable dungeons that players can handle and the further they get into the wilds, the more crazy difficult things get. On some level it makes sense to me, especially in a world that churns out a lot of adventurers (less time for a dungeon to recover and repopulate near population centers the players' heroes emerge from, and if you're a powerful lich it probably makes sense to get as far away as possible so that you don't tempt fate until it's convenient for the story!).

It's just not very satisfying from a worldbuilding point of view; to me it just seems overly contrived. Why does Undermountain get increasingly difficult as you descend its depths? A wizard literally did it. He's crazy, you see, and bored and so it serves as a playground. Sure. Why is the ancient ruined city way away from all other habitation (other than to keep its powerful walking dead from being encountered too early on in a campaign)? There aren't a whole lot of abandoned cities in the real world that don't have a new city that sprung up either on top of, adjacent to or fairly nearby; it turns out that cities generally get built in places for a lot of good reasons and leaving that area unsettled for long isn't really a thing that happens. If you look at how societies collapse and leave ruins and how ecology works in our world, it's pretty apparent that adventure should be all around.

Part of this is due to the way most games are designed. Character design in most conventional RPGs traces an arc from the barely-competent newbie up to characters that are serious influences on their world, capable of facing down any manner of threat found on their planet (or even beyond their planet, depending on whether you use epic level rules or not). It's a huge reward for players to watch the characters they invest time and emotional work into develop from nobodies to some of the most capable people in their world. But when I think about the fiction that appeals to me and the types of stories that I really enjoy (and which to a large degree supposedly influenced the design of most games), you don't really see that sort of arc to the narrative. Aside from Gandalf, nobody in the Lord of the Rings goes from zero to unstoppable mighty hero. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were just nobodies that scrabbled to get by and got sucked into adventure as much from incurable wanderlust as from being recruited by mysterious wizard figures into going after the latest McGuffin. I like big, shared worlds that I can immerse myself in with character after character and really get into all the grubby depths of things. I enjoyed reading A Wheel of Time, but where do you go in that world after Rand and his buddies do their thing? It's a one-off story, and I don't find that all that interesting for more than the occasional game.

What I really want to see done well is a system where you can build a world and then populate it with all manner of dungeons and ruins and wild lands. Toss in some giant mountains that separate continents, stick some giants and dragons in there. Stick an elaborate crypt and some ancient ruins near the coastal city. Let the players explore it; don't tell them it's too high level for them (or worse let them run in and die just to have them find out they're over their head). I want to see challenges, sure, but challenges that are surmountable and fun to play regardless of where you are in the arc of your character development. Fighting off a lich and its skeleton minions should be a challenge throughout, and not a buzzsaw trip through the lackeys followed by an actually challenging and enjoyable fight against the lich. Similarly, working through the den of kobolds that have been harassing a caravan route should be a challenge regardless of when the players stumble upon it, even if they're on their way to the next city along the road with their hard-won rewards from the lich they just killed. Even Beowulf had trouble with things despite being a renowned hero.

In part it comes down to preference, and I know I can't be the only one who'd like to see a game that still feels heroic and lets you tell great stories with your friends while also being perhaps a bit more dangerous for the players and with a lower overall level of magic. Some extremely popular games claim to be able to simulate a host of settings and styles of play, but their rules really aren't designed to do that without a lot of legwork and handwaving. I like games where the players' characters are capable and can develop their skills to learn new things and reward players for their investment, but are also still mortal and don't transcend to near-godhood just because they're really accomplished killing machines. A flatter leveling system that focuses more on the skills characters learn and develop rather than the power they gain seems more suitable to the types of stories I like. I'm at a place now where I want to try and build that game and experience that sort of play, and maybe others out there might enjoy it too.

So I'm building my own system...

In a way, I suppose it was inevitable that 25 years of reading and tinkering with different systems would lead me to trying to put together one of my own. It's not that all the other systems are bad so much as that they don't quite scratch that itch for the game I'd like to play/run.

One of the things that really grabs me with RPGs is the whole exploration and discovery angle. I love being able to get together with a group of friends and enter a world where we can set out from our homeland and just experience a reality different from our own. Playing wet-behind-the-ears adventurers that stumble upon a den of thieves that spirals into a dark conspiracy stretching the Great City and beyond or delving into a long-forgotten crypt and finding that although the original "inhabitants" might be dead, it's far from abandoned (or maybe the original inhabitants aren't so dead after all...). But I've long been annoyed that the level curve in most fantasy games is so pronounced.

You start out as glorified city guards or scrappy apprentices, go on your first adventure and fight some suitably (comparatively) unintimidating monsters. You get a bit better at what you do and start working your way up the ladder, slowly passing beyond the low-level threats you cut your teeth on up to bigger and badder threats. That's well and good, but this trajectory always kind of made me sad, for a few reasons. First, it just makes for an implausible system...why is everything so easily stratified into gradations of danger? Why aren't traditionally (to RPGs) "minor" monsters like kobolds or goblins such a giant threat? If they're so easily eradicated, why don't cities just hire one set of experienced adventurers to just clear out the whole region? I also don't like the way this sort of thing gate-keeps the really cool monsters from new players. If you're playing a more traditional hex crawl exploration game, sometimes you find things you just can't really manage and that's not quite as much fun as it could be otherwise. Finally it makes for some really weird ecology in dungeons (I'm an ecologist, of course this would bother me).

I'll go over each of the main points in detail, laying out why a particular issue annoys me and what I think a suitable solution might be. I often find that writing things down helps to clarify things for myself, so hopefully getting this up in a coherent document will jump start some things in my brain and help me to better understand what my goals are and how to achieve them. And comments are always welcome--I love having additional perspectives on things and input on what seems fun to other people who love playing games (or who think that what I'm envisioning as fun might turn out to be less than thrilling).

Delving into dungeon ecology

After a long gaming hiatus, I've finally been getting back into the hobby with a new group. As their dungeon master, I've been delving through a jungle of new systems (the hobby has come a long way from selecting between flavors of Dungeons & Dragons!), supplements and online resources. It really is a golden age of gaming right now, even as console and PC games thrive. The one thing I've been thinking about as I come up with ideas for my players and look through sites is "This looks like a lot of fun, and I'd really like to do my part to contribute to these resources".

I've always enjoyed writing, and it's been a lot of fun turning that creativity into adventures and obstacles for my players. Here I'll be posting ideas for NPCs, small story arcs, sample dungeons and encounters, reviews of gaming products and my own original fiction. I'm also toying with a generic system for gaming, so expect to see pieces of that here as well. But most of all, when I discuss dungeons or other adventure locations, expect to get a healthy dose of what the denizens of those areas look like. I've spent too long as an ecologist and a would-be writer thinking about the things that live in a given location and how they interact to not include it now! I think little touches like relationships between creatures or how the inhabitants of a given area behave can add a lot to a dungeon or adventure description and provide guidelines about what might happen when the players stumble upon them.