The Foot of Blue Mountain

Arcade Gaming

Introduction

In the last post I made I mentioned something called Arcade Gaming, a style of play that I don't think has been articulated well outside of the relatively small circle of players that I play games with regularly. The following is an attempt to characterize and describe the style and the benefits and drawbacks thereof.

Arcade Gaming

D&D, at least in the classic conception of the game, has lots of procedures. Depending on the referee, these can range from simple guidelines to be followed on occasion to the all-encompassing structure by which the game is played. When I say procedures here I'm primarily talking about the dungeon and wilderness exploration procedures. Chances are if you're reading this you know what I'm talking about. Tracking turns or watches, traveling hexes, random encounters, that whole thing.

In Arcade Gaming, the point of the game is these procedures. I've said before, if not on this blog then definitely in a Discord channel somewhere, that exploring a dungeon is pleasurable in itself. Do we break into the next room and risk fighting some more monsters? What if there's a big treasure haul that we're missing out on through this stuck door? The tension created by the exploration and the attrition provided in the form of random encounters creates a pleasurable, exciting experience even removed from the context of a "story" or a "world" in which these procedures are happening.

A good example of this comes from Roguelikes. Not the card-based ones you're thinking of if you're under the age of 35, but the actual ASCII-based Roguelikes a la Infra Arcana, Moria, and somewhat obviously Rogue itself. The challenge in these games is very similar to the type of challenge that Arcade Gaming centers: managing your resources in the face of attrition. Whether it's torches, rations, or hit points, the name of the game is "can you reach the end before you run out of your resource?" and every part of the game interacts with that essential question directly. This is close to what we're trying to achieve with Arcade Gaming.

The "Win Condition" of Arcade Gaming

Classic D&D is pretty much a perfect vessel for this style of play because we have a very obvious way to keep track of how successful you are at navigating the procedures: Experience Points! Similar to playing Pac-Man or another classic arcade game, the "point" of this style of play for the player is nothing more than to accrue experience points. You go into a dungeon or a wilderness, kill shit or find treasure, get out, and reap the benefits. Perhaps you level up or find an item that lets you delve a little further this time, perhaps you don't. Either way, get back in the dungeon!

What Arcade Gaming doesn't care about

Since the primary goal of Arcade Gaming is to engage with the classic dungeon/wilderness exploration loop, everything in the game serves to reinforce that purpose. This sounds obvious, but in practice can go against the instincts of a lot of referees. Here's a quick list of things you don't need if you're trying to run a game in this style:

Now of course you can have all of these things, but if you do they ought to exist solely to propel the exploration. Something like an Adventurer's Guild is a good example, because it gives a justification for doing the exploration but, most importantly in the context of Arcade Gaming, can introduce challenges that meaningfully change the experience of dungeon crawling (taxes on the loot you bring back, officially sanctioned vs. banned exploration practices, membership fees, codes of conduct, etc.) Everything in the world exists to change the texture of the exploration that's happening.

This is just OSR with a new name, Stupid Chud-Boy

I don't think so! There are a few key differences that separate it from my understanding of the OSR as a playstyle.

Less Focus on Agency: A lot of OSR heads talk about the playstyle's focus on variations in agency and the ability to make choices in an open-ended sandbox. This distinguishes the playstyle from more trad-focused games, where there is a much stricter range of possible choices (playing through a Delta Green operation has a much stricter range of possible outcomes than playing in the Dolmenwood hexcrawl, for example).

In contrast, Arcade Gaming is focused solely on agency within the context of the exploration procedure. Who cares about the sandbox, we love dungeons and wildernesses baby.

Less Focus on Simulationism: You know how almost all referees have a pet setting that they work on and detail out? Worldbuilding is an extremely common ancillary hobby to running tabletop games. Arcade Gaming doesn't really care about this side of the hobby, since you don't need a setting or a context in order to engage with the dungeon or wilderness exploration procedures. Something like Sam Sorensen's New Simulationism doesn't apply to Arcade Gaming, since it's not really concerned with exploring a fictional world. Any world-building or simulation that does happen is done in service of changing the exploration experience, not to be explored on its own terms.

This Sounds Lame, Why Should I Run Like This?

Maybe it does! People come to tabletop for all sorts of reasons, and many of those reasons are anathema to this style of game. That said, I think there are a few key benefits of this style that make it an attractive way to run games for a lot of people:

Ease of Prep: We're all adults, and adults as a rule tend to be busier than they have any right to be. With Arcade Gaming, though, the things one needs to prep are straightforward and obvious. Thanks to the OSR's perverted obsession with dungeons, hexcrawls, and procedures to make them, you can assemble enough material to run this style of game for decades in an afternoon.

Low-Context Gaming: Dungeon exploration isn't exactly the most complicated thing in the world, nor is it something that necessitates a lot of preparation beforehand on the side of the players. This is awesome because it means that new players can be brought up to speed quickly and start playing without a lengthy on-boarding process or lots of homework.

Interplayability: This style of game shines in a community of hobbyists who are running lots of games. Having an Open Table policy and allowing characters to jump back and forth between games allows people who, in the context of a more traditional tabletop game, wouldn't normally game together to share a table and work together between games being run simultaneously.

The social aspect of Arcade Gaming really can't be understated. Since the style is predicated on procedures, you can accommodate much larger player counts than you might otherwise be able to in a more traditional game. Pair that with an Open Table format and an existing community of people running games and you can cram a lot of people into a game and have a lot of fun!

Running good Arcade Games

So you've been convinced that Arcade Gaming is interesting and want to give it a whirl; where do you start? I've compiled some advice for running this sort of game that I think would've been very helpful to me starting out running stuff in this style.

Think in Game Terms when Prepping: A common maxim in tabletop is to "play the world, not the rules" and while I think that's true for most styles, Arcade Gaming shines when the referee understands the mechanics of the system they're using and can design spaces to explore utilizing that understanding. In my mind, the key concept to keep in mind is Variance, which is basically just making sure the challenges of the exploration space change meaningfully in different places. Maybe the first floor of the dungeon is called Minion Manse and has a bunch of 1HD monsters on the encounter table, so you want to bring a bunch of fighters. Perhaps there's an alternate entrance to the dungeon called Trap Town that has a ton of traps, which might be a better entrance for a party that has tons of Thieves or hirelings to throw into spike pits. Yet another entrance or a sub-level could be called Left Turn Lot and has tons of left turns in the dungeon map. One of the key joys of this style of play is building an understanding of the space in which you're exploring. Consciously designing spaces to have a "gimmick" puts this joy at the forefront of what players will be playing for.

Reward Player Skill: This is a common (but maybe dated) bell to ring in OSR spaces, but this is a style of game about pawns and how they're moved around a chess board, not a game about characters and how their stories unfold. In a way, you're running the game like a board game, with relatively strict procedures and a pre-defined structure for the campaign. At the same time, you're playing a tabletop game, which is a lot more open-ended than its closed, stateful cousins in the board game space. Rewarding clever, open-ended thinking and group problem solving is the reason you're running an Arcade Game instead of sitting in your room and playing Nethack.

Keeping things Normal: There's a tendency in lots of OSR spaces to re-imagine classic monsters (hello Luke Gearing), make new and literary magic items and spells (hello Gay Beholder server), or construct fancy bespoke classes (hello GLOG server, I am looking at you and :relieved:ing), and in general completely retool how classic D&Disms work. This is awesome and a good writing exercise, and pays dividends for creating wonder and mystery at a traditional table, but goes against the spirit of Arcade Gaming. Keeping Things Normal, or sticking to the classic D&Disms that everyone knows, has lots of benefits. It's less confusing for people who are familiar with D&D. For those who aren't, it introduces these cliches in their platonic environment. It speeds up play (since you don't have to explain and reexplain that your Orcs are special and different from the classic Orc). More importantly in the context of D&D, thinking about the monsters in terms of their purpose in a dungeon crawl instead of their fictional aesthetics helps you make dungeons that challenge players in a more compelling and interesting way. Who cares if your orcs are purple and shit fairy dust, they have 1HD and 7AC in the Delving Deeper rules and thus serve as a very compelling low-level monster type on an encounter table.

Now that you've got a good understanding of the idea behind Arcade Gaming, run forth! Run games for your friends, make them laugh and smile and have a good time, and participate in the delightful act of play. I believe in you.