Playing With "But"

A Worldbuilding/GM Tool

I just came back from my summer vacation. You can only spend so much time on the beach so we played some RPGs with my daughters. To get them quickly onboard, I did some collaborative worldbuilding with them.

We went around the table, and I asked questions like: “What kind of place is this?”, “What dangers are there around here?”, etc. After every question, though, I asked the next person to give the answer their own spin. We got things like “there are orcs here but they cannot be hurt by arrows”.

They are small enough that they were confusing orcs and orcas, which led to some hilarity. The point, though, is, that even such a simple idea immediately sparked our imagination: why would orcs be immune to arrows? What does it tell us about them?

Juxtaposing two ideas that way is a powerful GM tool which can create surprising and fresh results with little effort. Let’s explore some ways we can use it.

Ideas that make you go “hmm” are good. Photo by Devilz . on Unsplash

Campaign ideas

What do we want to play today? Roll two six-sided dice:

1. Heroic fantasy

2. Superheroes

3. Western/Cowboys

4. Horror

5. Post-apocalyptic

6. Space Opera

BUT:

1. It’s set in a much earlier or later era than expected (flip a coin)

2. Make everything much smaller or much larger (flip a coin)

3. Dial the supernatural/magic/etc. way up or down (flip a coin)

4. Invert the expected tone

5. Use a completely different environment (e.g., an unexpected climate or terrain, the underworld, etc.)

6. Insert an important element from another type of game (roll d6 on the first table again)

A lot of published games make such underexplored connections. “Cowboys” + “Dial the supernatural way up” gives you Weird West (games such as Deadlands, We Deal In Lead or Frontier Scum). If I get “post-apo” + “invert the tone,” I could land on a hopeful game like Eco Mofos!!¹

Let’s roll some dice and see what we get (I’m actually doing it right now):

• 3. Western/Cowboys BUT

• 4. Invert the expected tone

The usual tone of cowboys stories is about taming a wild frontier, survival, and outlaws. How can we invert that? One idea would be to play as the Natives, defending against the encroachment of new settlers. Another idea might be to play with cowboys who – for whatever reason – had to go back to civilization (maybe set the game in NYC or London) and struggle with functioning in organized society again (“What do you mean I can’t shoot people here?!”)

This is fun, let’s do one more:

• 4. Horror

• 2. Make everything much larger

Ok, wow. This gives me so many ideas. Perhaps the game takes place in some kind of megastructure (could be a dreamscape or an alien ruin). Perhaps it’s a kaiju kind of story. Perhaps the individual scenes in the scenario span centuries, and you confront the same horror with new characters (maybe new inhabitants of the same building?)

As you can see, adding a “BUT” to your generative resources can make things immediately unexpected and fresh.

Originally, I was planning on also sharing some random encounter tables based on that same idea but this post is already getting a bit long. Perhaps you can share your own creations in the comments.

1. I mention this game every chance I get, I know. Sue me! It’s good.