Building Bhakashal - The Council of the Isms

Back when I was running games for my friends I didn’t worry much about identifying the kind of game I was running. My players, for the most part, were content to let me run the kind of game I wanted to, and weren’t very much concerned with labels.

However, I’m now designing my own game, and for the sake of clarity, it would be useful to clarify the design philosophy behind Bhakashal, particularly as I have been public about my issues with “story games”, and it occurred to me that this might give people the wrong idea about what Bhakashal is and how it works.

My preferred style of play is gamist, with the understanding that I may have a idiosyncratic definition of the term. You can decide that after reading the post.

Tell Me A Story

I have said here and on Twitter, many, many times, that for me, D&D is not a “collaborative storytelling exercise”, and I still maintain that. But the reason for this belief is not that I think there shouldn’t be “story” based mechanics in the game, or that a story focused game cannot be fun.  Instead, I think that focusing on telling a story when running a game leads to the kind of game I don’t really enjoy running, whereas running the game as a game, without the “story” focus, produces the kind of game play I enjoy.

So, first off, D&D has story game mechanics, and I have both used them in regular D&D and put them in Bhakashal.

You don’t need to look at what is being done today to see this, AD&D (my game of choice!) has story game mechanics in it and has since day 1. 

Hit points are story game mechanics. Your “average” soldier has 1-6 hit points. Your “average” 3rd level fighter has 16.5 hp! As Gygax sagely pointed out in the DMG, your 70hp fighter isn’t built like a hippo, so how does he have that many HP? Well, HP aren’t just “meat points”, they aren’t just size or bulk, they represent luck, favor of the gods, that sort of thing. In short, HP are designed to make your character more like the protagonist in a fantasy story, one that manages to survive the craziest stuff and make it to the end of the story with the reader. There is no other reason for high HP other than to ensure some degree of survivability, and THAT is a story game mechanic.

The same things can be said about saving throws, Gygax tells you as clear as day that the hero should “always have a chance” of survival, even if it’s remote. Again, this is a story game mechanic, in the stories the heroes often manage to “just escape” a cruel fate, and saving throws in the game model that idea well.

So AD&D has in its very core (there aren’t that many gaming concepts more “core” than Hit Points and Saving Throws!) story-game mechanics, mechanics that I embrace fully as part of the game and in Bhakashal.

In addition, I have played many a game of D&D with referees (and play groups) who were “story focused”, this generally entailed a few things:

• A lot more in-character role play

• A focus on achieving the goal of the story without excessive distraction

• Some degree of fudging of the dice to keep things moving in the “right” direction

• A referee that had an outsized influence on what happened in game

Story focused gaming of this kind, with a referee who is good at what they do, and a group that is on board, is a joy to experience. I’m actually of the somewhat radical opinion that pretty much ANY play style can work with the right referee and the right group.

So I’m not against story focused D&D, and my experience of the game over the years has been that there are many people who enjoy this approach. 

Have I Lost the Plot???

So why do I say that I am not a, “story focused” referee, when I play a game with story game mechanics, and have enjoyed playing in games with a story focused referee and group?

The main reason for my abandonment of this approach is primarily historical. I played for many years in “story focused” games, both as a referee and as a player. As a DM I fudged rolls, I invented labyrinthine plots for the PCs, and I “railroaded” them where needed to serve “the story”. I also played in a LOT of games that were like that. Some DM’s pulled it off, some didn’t, but playing in someone else’s idea of a “dramatic story” was often a drag, as, and let’s just be honest here, not everyone is good at telling a story!

Also, as a referee I found this style of gaming far too demanding, as I essentially had to do EVERYTHING to make it work. I had to channel the player group into certain actions and outcomes by altering rolls and changing the material on the fly in order to serve “the story”, and as ANY referee knows, that can be a TON of work, like herding displacer beasts. 

I also had to come up with “the story” (even if I liberally stole ideas from my talkative players), and that was always on me. Sometimes I did a good job, sometimes I did not, but it was always a point of stress. Some groups wanted to be in a game that was like an existing story (e.g., “I want to do a John Carter airship battle”), some groups disliked when I borrowed from existing stories. 

Another thing that emerged from my past playing experience was that I became aware of certain things about the game, patterns in events and responses, patterns that were the result of the DM making things happen to fit “the story”. I noticed how PCs “just barely” survived the fight, how villains “just miraculously happened to have” what was needed to allow them to escape and fight another day, that sort of stuff. Once I noticed the patterns to my DM’s storytelling, they took me out of the game. It became possible for me to predict where the game was going, and that bled all of the magic out of it.

I am well aware this is not the case for many people, but it is the case for me, and another reason why Bhakashal is as it is. For people who find that stuff takes them out of the game, Bhakashal gives you a different option.

And worse still, if the game wasn’t “fun”, or the outcome was frustrating or upsetting, it was on me. I know people will always point out that the players have a role in this, and of course they do, but just like the goaltender in a soccer game, some wag will always point the finger at the DM when things don’t go well. If you are “telling a story” as a referee, then it’s often put on you when the story goes south or isn’t satisfying.

So my frustration with a story focus in D&D is that it tends to be hard to pull off and it put too much on me as the referee, both in work and responsibility.

And to be fair, when you surf social media discussion of TTRPGs you often find people complaining about the challenge of meeting the dramatic and narrative needs of multiple players, and how the DM is “responsible” for a whole host of things in order to ensure that the game is maximally fun! It seems like such a chore. 

But I don’t choose play styles out of frustration, I choose them as they are the most fun for me and my players, and for me, that style of play is gamist. I hadn’t really thought too much about this, but when it was pointed out to me, it suddenly made sense of a lot of my disparate practices:

• rolling everything in the open, dropping the screen

• character death is on the table

• randomizing NPC and monster actions, using encounter reactions, morale, etc.

• allowing all playable groups (Bhakashal races) to be all classes

• opening up multi-classing and dual-classing to all

• randomizing spell allocation

• reduced overall HP but allow HP to be spent on hits, damage, saving throws, grappling or initiative

• introduce a multiple save mechanic to deal with challenge, not a modifier

What unites all of these design decisions is the fact that Bhakashal (like D&D) is a game, and games should be challenging, exciting, and fair. Each of the decisions above does one or more of those things. 

Rolling in the open makes it exciting and fair. 

The possibility of character death makes it exciting and challenging.

Randomizing NPC/monster actions and spells makes things challenging (as they are unpredictable, opponents get a degree of tactical opacity) and fair (as the ref doesn’t always choose the optimal attack) 

Removing playable group class restrictions and opening up multi and dual classing gives the players more options, which is exciting, you can play the combination you want.

Reducing HP makes the game more challenging and exciting, allowing them to be spent gives the players an important resource management decision to make in regular game play, which makes the game more challenging (you can’t do everything), and gives them a chance, if they are sensible with their HP, ameliorate the occasional bad roll (but not all bad rolls, as HP are reduced), which is fair.

Multiple consecutive saves are far more exciting than one save with a heavy modifier.

The list could be extended. 

I want Bhakashal to be challenging, as playing challenging games can be fun, particularly when they are group games where meeting the challenge requires teamwork and cooperation. I also like it when a game has resource management decisions, as these allow player skill to impact outcomes, and I think this is both rewarding and fair.

I want Bhakashal to be exciting, because the body shaking, scream producing excitement I see at my table when I roll in the open should be bottled and consumed, it’s electric. 

I want Bhakashal to be fair, because it’s a game, and games need to be fair, and when you succeed or just survive in a fair, challenging game, you get a sense of achievement. 

Games require skills, you can improve at them over time and through experience, so a fair game also means consistency in the rules, and openness about how things are being done.

So for example, Bhakashal recommends that any rules adjudication about a spell, action, etc., gain group assent before being put into place, and that any breakdown of options for an action (e.g., on a 1-2 the merchant doubles the price, on a 3-4 they triple it, on a 5-6 they ask for items in trade as well) should be approved by the table. I generally outline the odds and ask if there are any objections, then they make the case that the spread should be changed or an option added or dropped, and we all, me included, have to agree.

A final word about “story”, it is my belief that a challenging, exciting and fair game will be the kind of game about which you can tell dramatic, fun stories. There are moments from our games that will be talked about for years. NONE of this came about because I, the referee, made it happen. ALL of it was the result of a game world I created interacting with player decisions and randomized dice rolls. I influence it, I don’t control it, the players influence it, they do not control it, and the result is far less work for me than “story focused” gaming ever was. 

I have sustained as many as 7 simultaneous campaigns with over 40 players between them using a sandbox style, random table generative, gamist approach to play. It can be played perpetually and is always unpredictable and thus challenging and exciting.

It’s not for everyone, and story focused gaming can certainly knock it out of the park too, but it is worth understanding what you will be sitting down to when you run adventures in Bhakashal.