You Gotta Hide the Money in the Tampon Box: What I learned from "The 'Hood" TTRPG
The 'Hood by James Mullen of Groundhoggoth Games is a TTRPG about regular ass people surviving, thriving, and conniving in the streets. Far flung from the traditional Heroic Fantasy structure of the medium, the characters in this game are confined mostly to a singular locality. That's not a bad thing, since they're enmired in so much petty minutiae that the half-dozen blocks that constitute their life are as robust and treacherous as any fantasy kingdom.
I've run two campaigns of this game. The first was Kingdom of Neon, centered around a discordant Jewish family living in Jersey City. The second, Goddamn Adventurers!, recontecxtuilzed the game into a High Fantasy world where the player characters took on the roles of background NPCs in a typical DnD game: the quest-giving bartender, the city gang leader, the local peacekeepers, and so on. Both of these wildly different campaigns were among the most rewarding and valuable I've had the opportunity to MC. Reflecting on them, I've had a few revelations that will impact by MC'ing henceforth.
The Hazard of Planning Too Many NPCs
I've reached the point where I no longer fall into the trap of constructing and planning specific plotlines. With enough experience, I've accepted that this is a pointless endeavor as your players will always surprise you. This is one of the chaotic beauties of the medium, and thankfully the Powered by the Apocalypse system acknowledges and accommodates this reality. Not every PbtA game is a "sandbox" and yet they all allow for a organic, flexible world.
What I haven't escaped is manufacturing a bunch of NPCs before the game ever begins. Before we even sit down for Session 0, the setting is already filled with funky lil' weirdos running around. The downside to this being that if you spend time developing and fleshing out all these dudes, it is inevitable that many of them will not play a significant role in the actual game. This is especially true of shorter campaigns, of which I run pretty much exclusively these days. Even if you find a way to slot and jam all of your prefabricated NPCs into the game, many of them will just not be of interest or relevance to the player, particularly if there are NPCs they already do care about. Another beautiful serendipity of TTRPGs is that your players will gloss over an NPC you spent hours developing and then emotionally attach themselves to someone you improvised into a scene.
I almost named this section "The Problem of Planning Too Many NPCs" but while there are some drawbacks to filling out the biographies of your world before any players step within, it's still generally rewarding. I know that a few directors and authors create characters that are never seen within their work, but give their creators a kind of logic and backbone so that they can better understand their own worlds. I feel like I'm doing something similar. Additionally, I plan to replay campaigns with different groups, so these NPCs might still have their moment in the sunlight. It's fun!
Tip: Make your PCs a Family
It started innocuously; a player said they wanted to be The Matriarch, a very interesting playbook both powered and ensnared by their family. The other players pipe up, "So, should we be your kids?" I had no intention for Kingdom of Neon to center around a family unit. And yet, here we were, and my God was it a fucking blast. When I younger, I was dismissive of the Family Drama genre of movies. "When there are stories about war and space travel and metamorphosis, who wants to hear about some family?" And then I figured out that Family Drama rules (and concurrently, that all the great Gangster movies are Family Dramas with machine guns and spaghetti). Turns out, the same is true for TTRPGs, especially a game like The 'Hood, which already has a focus on the tragedies of the everyperson.
The concept of family, in all its cultural and historical variations, is a richly interesting one. There is an expectation for romantic relationships to dissolve, the end of a romance is anything but atypical. Even friendships after time often naturally fade away. But the familial relationship is an interesting beast. Perhaps because unlike romances/friendships, family bonds are not contingent upon the people actually liking each other. How many times have you heard, "They piss me off, but they're still my mother/father/brother/sister/cousin/etc.?" Family members can certainly be estranged (which is oftentimes necessary!) but even that remains a big deal, even beyond what it means to be ex-lovers.
What this means in TTRPGs is that you end up with a complex web of interpersonal relationships before the game even starts, that are bound to fill your game with chaos and dilemmas. I don't want to make family sound all bad, as it has the potential for a lot of tenderness, vulnerability and unconditional love. Overall, family is a very powerful and wacky institution. And it takes on some many forms that can be adjusted to a tables liking. "This whole thing about families feels like biological essentialism." Adoptions! Found families! "This kills off any chance for PC/PC romance, what if my table likes that?" How about this: start with your PCs in longterm relationships like marriage. Let the other PCs be their kids, or parents! "Sounds fun, but I don't know how I feel about being a 'direct' part of a family unit..." In-laws are great for this kind of thing. In a Dogs in the Vineyard campaign, I was brothers-in-law with another PC and that added so much to our dynamic. We dug a lot of pits. We solved pit-based problems, and if a problem wasn't pit-based, we made it pit-based. We were "The Pit Brothers!"
Have some, or all, of the PCs be part of a family unit. Role-playing and Family alike both thrive on the inherent contradictions that lie in the dormant subconscious of 'civilized' society. Why not put them together?
Tip: Make your PCs Share a Home
Another recipe for facilitating role-play at its most fluid and volatile. When PCs are jammed into such a close and intimate proximity, the magic has to happen.
I think a large part of this has to do with physical proximity and tensions. A natural response to this would be, "How is this different than your typical DnD party, who sleep at the same inns and camp together?" This tried-and-true setup gives the PCs too much freedom, too much space. There's a lot of fun that can come from this of course: latenight sleepover shenanigans and the inevitable deep convos that come with sharing a watch shift out in the wilds. DnD parties are also typically on the move, so their living situations rarely remain static.
Now, take the opposite approach. The PCs all living in the same house or apartment. Their rooms are all pretty close, and loud noises or conversations will be audible to everyone else. Anytime someone wants to make food, use the bathroom, or even enter/exit their own premises, the chances of bumping into someone are very high. See where this is going? If someone wants to say, hide something, they either have to stow it in their rooms right under the noses of their party or hide it somewhere off site, maybe with someone else.
Let's make it tighter. Find something useful that everyone would want to frequently use: a computer, a television, a leyline. Now make sure there's only one of that coveted object so that everyone has to share it. Also, one shared bathroom. It's not about the obvious doo-doo humor, you can throw that out. But anyone who has been in a living situation involving a single shared bathroom knows what turmoil it brings. A mixed-gender shared bathroom exacerbates the discord. I am certain you can have a fulfilling RP sequence in any game that involves either shampoo bottles or toilet paper etiquette.
The 'Hood is a game about poverty, struggle and scarcity so the realities of tight living quarters and sparse resources comes about naturally. But I could see these elements working in a number of settings: post-apocalyptia, the confines of a space station or colony, the spartan living conditions of soldiers or mercenaries. As long as everyone gets to argue about chores.
You Need a Mostly Useless Shopping Mall
One of the central recurring locations to your campaign should be a department store or something of an ilk. It can also be something like a department store or strip-mall. The principle should be that it is loaded primarily with useless crap. For both realism and function's sake, there should be stuff within that is actually useful to the PCs; things like food, furniture, clothing, electronics and so forth. Hell, maybe there are some downright magical or invaluable goodies hidden away. But it should mainly consist of consumerist ephemera.
There's a few reasons to do this. First off, RPGs generally function as escapism. But no matter how swaggeringly invincible your dragonslayer is, or how cooly aloof your elite hacker appears, they should not be able to escape the invasive clutches of late capitalism. If they want to resupply or find the right antidote or key, they have to meander through a maze of Pottery Barns and calendar kiosks. They will subsist on $1.50 pizza slices and Styrofoamy Sierra Mists if they want to get anywhere.
Second, PCs be shoppin. More important than any PCs stat array or build will be their outfit, built with Anna Wintour-like meticulousness. If they have any sort of stable base or home, furniture and interior decoration also become a top priority. Some MCs that are conscious of this will incorporate artisans, each with unique designs, into their campaign. But since most campaigns are centered around a broad conflict or adventure, most MCs do not have time to turn their game into a runway show.
The thing is, your players ultimately want to shop, even if they don't know it at first. TTRPGs are shopping simulators occasionally interrupted by Orcs. The best thing to do is to embrace this fact and make their shopping as perilous and enigmatic as any dungeon delve. After all, isn't the shopping mall simply the corporate dungeon?
Make at least half the stores incredibly specific. There should be at least one candle store, rainboot emporium, Christian Family photography center, pretzel place and a Macy's. All non-essential stores should have the best sales. Whenever your characters buy anything, the merchant should badger them about signing up for a rewards program. If your PCs are not going to the mall, keep sending coupons to their living quarters, and when they actually use the coupons, have the checkout cashiers explain the Kafkian requirements that are necessary in order to apply the discounts. One of the stand-out moments from my first 'Hood game was a PC trying to get a 10% discount at Kinko's print shop. It took about ten minutes in real time.
Oh yeah, and put a bunch of claw games with plushies all over the mall.
Finding Your Genre (and the Monolith of DnD)
I avoided published TTRPGs for a long time. I was really into the idea of role-playing games, but my desire for creativity seemed at odds with the constraints of the medium. You take on a cliché archetype, you go into a dungeon, you avoid traps, kill monsters and get treasure. It sounded like the litany of dungeon video games I had already played. But a few years ago, 5e began its meteoric rise as not just a game but a pop culture icon, and I paid attention. Something this big, with this much energy, it couldn't just be a video game in board game form surely?
I got into DnD through Critical Role and The Adventure Zone. Beyond introducing me to the game itself, these actual plays educated me on who DnD players were. These weren't the stereotypical forsaken-to-the-basement outcasts from media portrayal. These were fun, lovely, attractive and supremely talented people. Maybe my suppositions about this whole thing were wrong. I learned the rules, I read the guides, I spent a year grappling with whatever the hell a "Spell Slot" was.
I played DnD and had a good ass time under the direction of an experienced and dedicated DM. I got into the depths of the game, its meta and design and general philosophy. But for all this, I never wanted to run the game itself. I had learned so much about it, how it had evolved past the point of a dungeon-clearing exercised. But what I wanted my games to look and feel like did not mesh with DnD at all.
Then The Adventure Zone introduced me to Powered by the Apocalypse and it 360 slam dunked my life.
Here was what I was looking for this whole time. The philosophy of this system, in regards to what the MC did, what the players did, how the game was structured; it felt like culture shock coming from DnD. Most of all, it was the diversity of settings and genres that existed throughout PbtA. The original game and system namesake takes place in a post-apocalytpic world enshrouded in a weird psychic maelstrom. Monster of the Week is a modern supernatural hunt anthology. Urban Shadows is about otherworldly metropolitan politics. Monsterhearts is "Twilight: The TTRPG".
Reflecting back on DnD after this, I figured out what my problem was. For all its evolution, alterations and iterations, DnD is still decidedly in the Tolkienesque Heroic High Fantasy genre. Characters rise from lowly novices to inevitable heroic status, maybe something akin to Demi-godhood. Of course a creative DM can change this, can subvert it and recontectualize it. But they are still working with something that is in this genre, at its heart, within its DNA.
DM Emeritus Matt Colville has said that DnD is his favorite game because it can do anything. I have to disagree; with enough tinkering and jury-rigging, DnD can look like anything. But DnD is a High Fantasy Adventure game that still proudly wears its Wargaming elements on its sleeves. And, in that context, it is quite great! But DnD is not designed to be a Cyberpunk Gumshoe Noir or a High School Slice-of-Life.
Now I know that part of my trepidation in DM'ing DnD came from its setting. I do not feel qualified in creating a Tolkienesque Heroic High Fantasy world and populating it with interesting places, inhabitants and conflicts. Hell, I didn't watch Lord of the Rings until I was 18. I felt a deficiency within me in trying to conceptualize a campaign. I kept falling back on cliches, on the familiar, as my worlds lacked the organic 'feel' and breadth of other DMs. I felt like I'd never be able to run anything noteworthy.
Then I found other TTRPGs and realized that I had locked myself in a false prison. In the grand scheme of the medium, Tolkienesque Heroic High Fantasy only makes up a portion of games. Even within Fantasy everything from Whimsical Slice-of-Life to Dark Apocalyptia is on the table. I discovered settings where I felt instinctively inclined towards creativity and unconventionality.
DnD is the best and worst thing to happening to tabletop roleplaying. It has greatly been responsible for bringing the medium to life, popularizing it and establishing itself as a fixture of widespread popular culture. It is the greatest force in getting people to play TTRPGs in the first place. This has also unfortunately established DnD as a kind of monolith. In no other medium can I think of one work, one item or one person who singlehandedly dominates so much of the scene and discourse. (Maybe the closest phenomenon is the NFL's relationship to gridiron football. When's the last time you heard someone talk about the Canadian Football League?)
For many people new to the TTRPG scene, it's natural to think that DnD is the medium in its totality. DnD is the end-all-be-all when it comes to mechanics, setting, game design and philosophy. This leads to a lot of struggle, as people want DnD to be butchered into the game they want to play, without realizing that their is such a multitude of games out there that would be right for them. Look at any given DnD forum or subreddit for several examples at this.
What do we do about this? Like the King of Jews, the main proponent to encouraging growth and diversity in the TTRPG scene is spreading The Good Word. Tell your DnD groups about other games! When someone in your campaign inevitably asks, "How could we get X into DnD", bring up the fitting title! Are you one of the many people who can't find someone to MC your PbtA, D20, GURPs or Paranoia game? It's probably time to start MC'ing yourself.
If you are also a person who has struggling with "fitting" into DnD, know that there are games out there made for you! It's all a matter of finding them in a DnD-dominated landscape. I recommend www.rpg.net, the r/RPG subreddit, as well as http://apocalypse-world.com/pbta/ . The last one is chiefly PbtA, but even within the system it's a great way to find out about the infinite possibilities of TTRPGs within just one system.
Finally: Play "The 'Hood"
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