Proactive RPG Manuscript: The Ordained · Game Master's Laboratory

Proactive RPG Manuscript: The Ordained

The gist of what's below: our new RPG, how to get it, and why we made it.

This month, instead of our usual Proactive Packet for Gold members, we're releasing a manuscript for our Proactive RPG, The Ordained: a fast-paced, storytelling RPG meant to be run in short campaigns. I'm hoping it creates about as much encouragement as possible for proactive playstyles, with less lecturing and books to read. Those are fun (at least for Jonah and I) but actually playing the game is more fun. The game implements most of the major principles of our books and merges them into a hexcrawl, sandbox-style game with lots of storytelling elements. PCs literally get their hands into the narrative, engaging in collaborative worldbuilding in the fiction by respooling threads of fate as best they can. It's also a punchy 40 pages (counting covers, maps, etc) so it's a pretty quick read to get to the table.

How do you get it? It's in the Classroom tab under the Proactive Packets tab, which Gold members have access to. It's just an initial manuscript now (not even a playtesting manuscript) so it's up for our Gold members. When we have a finished draft, I'll run some closed playtests. Once it's through layout and art, it'll be up through DriveThruRPG. Until then, it'll stay in the Classroom tab for our Gold members---while it's a complete game, it's not a finished product, so I don't really want to represent our work with it on DriveThruRPG or something.

This is sort of an experiment with marrying proactive principles into game mechanics (something many games already do!) in a controlled environment: it's short and punchy, builds a lot on some other pretty player-driven games, and has a lot of step-by-step setup for the game that uses proactive principles without necessarily giving a powerpoint on them. That's because my other motivation is easier onboarding for our players. Jonah and I's biggest regret about the first book is that we devoted very little space to actually getting players on board with, and indulging in, the principles of a proactive roleplaying game (a pretty big oversight since the game style is, well, player driven). This game doesn't outline those principles in the same way, because in order to create characters and use them effectively, you'll have to follow them (although there is a few snippets of lecture, as condensed as I could get them). We have other onboarding ideas for PARP, like live play and new written projects, but this is the one I got done first.

It's also a test for a much larger RPG I've been working on for several years now, with occasional input from Jonah. That's nearing completion of its first draft, and I'll start testing it soon after. It will probably follow a similar release pattern to this one (and be much, much larger in scope).

I see this one as being a printable zine, maybe with some limited print copies for conventions and stuff. Jonah and I both have a lot of ideas for short RPGs that fit in zine format, but they're mostly passion projects between our actual jobs and our other work for the lab (among other commitments) so they're probably a long way off. This one is mostly my pet project, but I expect there will be more. Which ones will become finished games with actual layout and a public release, who can say?

Long post aside, I'm excited to share this draft of the Ordained! Thank you for checking it out---I hope you find some enjoyment or inspiration out of it!

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Proactive RPG Manuscript: The Ordained