"The Fun Part of D&D Comes From Choosing What Rules to Ignore"

In the most recent episode of Boards & Swords, I got to sit down with Grant Howitt, creator of several TTRPGs like Honey Heist, about his latest game: Royal Blood. In this game, you are magic users taking on the "nobility" in an elaborate heist. Unlike most TTRPGs, the game uses Tarot cards instead of dice. During the interview, we talked about the nature of "One Shot" games like Royal Blood compared to the "standard" campaign style of play:

****

Chris Renshaw (CR): So I'm getting the impression this is more of like a one shot standalone kind of game vs like a campaign?

Grant Howitt (GH): Absolutely, 100%. It is designed to be zero prep.

CR: Well that's good, always a fan of that.

GH: So like, you can put prep in if you like. There's something which I clocked actually fairly recently. I've always written my games to be as low prep as possible, because I always used to find doing prep really frustrating. You know, I've been GM'ing 20 years now, on and off (more on than off), and every time that I would spend ages prepping, every time I spent building a relationship map and coming up with encounters and doing that sort of thing, the players wouldn't bite. Or, the players would go "oh this is the stuff he's prepared, I guess we'll do it". And it's by the numbers and it's really quite boring, um what's the word...procedural play. And the thing that always sparked my interested is that I'd have half an idea, the player would have half an idea, we'd spend an hour going back and forth:

"Actually we dress up as an owlbear and fight in this culture"  "Great, okay tell me more brilliant, what?"

And that's much more interesting than the intermeshing squabbles of the Church of Silver Sheaths which I spent all afternoon dreaming up. And I think this is possibly thanks to my undiagnosed ADHD or possibly thanks to just who I am, but I am much more excited to "Play and find out". I don't want to prep, I don't want to plot I want to turn up with half an idea, I want my players to bring the other half and we make something together which I couldn't have done and they couldn't have done. And now, the more I look into it, I think most people like prep. I think they like writing down the name of the wizard and drawing the dungeon and imagining what the motivations are and what's happening and they get excited about it. Imagine running a pre-published adventure! Disgusting! Read it and then vomiting it up, like a dog! Like a beast in the street!

CR: Well my favorite is to *use* the prewritten adventure and then tangent immediately. We did a Pathfinder game, Curse of the Crimson Throne, that adventure series. But, it ended up becoming more about the orc in our party was like "Yeah yeah yeah I'll do whatever, but I really want to open up a donut shop in your town, so if I do all of this will you sign the permits so I can get approved for this. Everything else was just the side quests so we can get that approval.

GH: And that's the exciting thing, right? I think that's also part of the fun of Dungeons & Dragons and why Dungeons & Dragons is so popular, and no one plays Dungeons & Dragons properly. The fun part of D&D comes from choosing what rules to ignore.

"Oh so it says this in the spell book" "Oh yeah, but you can do this...".

"Oh, like my mate's passed out and I gotta give him a magic potion...a potion of healing" "Oh just chuck it at his head, whatever, it doesn't matter..."

"I want to try and push this guy down the stairs" "Yeah, just give me a strength check-yeah we'll work it out that's fine."

And it's like, D&D is the dean who comes around and is like "ooohhhhh Nerd House!!!" And you're there, thumbing your nose and stealing a pig and running away. So I think that's part of the fun of D&D, but I think that prep is something which people really like doing and its part of the hobby which I don't resonate with-aside from the fact that I write full length setting books, so maybe I do.

****

Thanks to Grant for sitting down to talk with me about Royal Blood – make sure to listen to Boards & Swords #280, either through the video above or in your favorite podcast app, to hear the entire interview and head over to Rowan, Rook, and Decard if Royal Blood sounds like it is up your alley!

Notes/Disclaimers: I generally assume I know nothing. So if I've missed something, let me know in the comments. If you like these types of posts, consider subscribing to our patreon.