Blog Post

A Vast & Starlit Paradox

  • By keithstetson
  • 06 Feb, 2016
If you’ve read much of what I’ve written, you probably know that Epidiah Ravachol is one of my favorite game designers and overall people. Furthermore, I am a big fan of the misfit space friends genre of fiction. That’s what makes it strange that it took me so very long to play Vast & Starlit, […]
If you’ve read much of what I’ve written, you probably know that Epidiah Ravachol is one of my favorite game designers and overall people. Furthermore, I am a big fan of the misfit space friends genre of fiction. That’s what makes it strange that it took me so very long to play Vast & Starlit , his microgame of miscreants in space that is so short it will take you less time to read the whole game than it would to read my summary of it. In 2016 I have rectified this oversight to the tune of two plays.
And what wonderful stories we came up with! The kind that you look to shoehorn into any discussion of roleplaying you can. “Oh, that reminds me of the time our spaceship got jealous of the android and human interfacing and refused to play anything but jilted lover laments on the stereo…” Rich, exciting stuff that is the space equivalent of what Brendan Conway talks about as the Swords Without Master effect; when you hear an over-the-top, almost too good to believe story of sword and sorcery roleplaying, you can almost always pinpoint it as a Swords story. And the space version of that is what came out of our two Vast & Starlit sessions.
But…
I don’t know that it’s a successful game. Which is why this essay is labelled as it is, right? On some level I want to say that if a game produced fiction that I enjoyed that much, it must be a success. But on another level there is something about the game that I can’t identify and that bugs me like a stone inside my shoe. Every time I revisit Vast & Starlit it rubs against my little toesies.
But what I’m on about here isn’t so much the Vast & Starlit part of the title, but rather the paradox bit. If the fiction produced is not the way to judge a game, what is? What is it that makes a game – and here I want to be careful with my terminology – successful, or perhaps “good?” I feel like the thing that’s bothering me is that I’m saying is it’s not the end result . Which on some level strikes me as bat guano crazy. But when I start to unpack it at bit I think I can see the reason.
At first blush, I would think the way to judge the success of a recipe is by the quality of food it produces. If the food is delicious, the recipe is successful. But if we dig into the recipe we may find that it wasn’t the most effective way to get to that end product. Maybe it told me I would need three eggs and only ever had me use two. Maybe it didn’t tell me to preheat the oven at the beginning so now I’m twiddling about on my phone waiting for it to get up to temp.
Or perhaps it makes assumptions as to the knowledge of the chef reading it. Maybe the recipe ought to specify how to separate out the egg whites rather than leave the method up to the chef. Maybe it needs to mention you should mix the cornstarch with cold water and not warm water because not all chefs know this.
But even as I dig down into this metaphor I find myself thinking: those are behind the kitchen door issues. What does the dinner care, so long as the meal is tasty? But I suppose there is usefulness in the repeatability of that tasty meal. With this chef, on this night, it was tasty, but with a different chef who doesn’t know about the egg whites and didn’t have time to preheat the oven, the meal could be an inedible mess. That consistency could certainly be important to the dinner, and if I may extend the metaphor even further, would likely be key to the restaurant owner.
Is what I’m saying that the repeatability of quality fiction under varied conditions the measure of a game’s success? Perhaps. But then how large a sample size is needed to give a game the Stetson Stamp of Approval? How many times must I visit the restaurant to award it another Michelin star?
Ultimately I think this topic is more about questioning than answering, but I think it’s a valuable question. Still, I don’t think any amount of culinary metaphor is going to get me out of my paradox. Perhaps you can help cook up a solution in the comments?
By Keith Stetson 23 Oct, 2018
Over the weekend I had the good fortune to be a guest at Gauntlet Con 2018, the annual (and perhaps soon twice annual!) virtual convention run by the fine folks at the Gauntlet community (if you don't know about the Gauntlet yet, you've got some research to do). I ran Seco Creek, as I am wont to do. It was a super fun, if atypical playthrough. Our John Gammon couldn't make it, and I'd never run for that particular mix of four PCs before. We also had two former lovers in the mix - a new record! I think the tone ended up being a little lighter than usual, but I certainly wouldn't call the ending happy. Check it out for yourself!  
By Keith Stetson 13 Jul, 2018


If you know me, you likely know I love Epidiah Ravachol’s sword and sorcery RPG Swords Without Master and have run and played it dozens of times. Based on a suggestion by Michael Miller, I decided to take my relationship with Swords to the next level and run three interconnected sessions of if at the recently concluded Dexcon. My pitch was as follows:

Swords Without Master; "Anthology" by Dig a Thousand Holes Publishing; presented by Keith Stetson. An INDEPENDENTLY PUBLISHED GAME - Part of the Indie Games Explosion! Sundered from us by gulfs of time and stranger dimensions dream ancient worlds and ancient tales. Take up sword and staff, pen and ink, and inscribe your own tale in the Anthology. These stories written on air will be composed by us over a series of three linked gaming sessions. Play one session to play a short story; play them all for the full Anthology.

While we did roll Jovial several times, Glum predominated as I detail in my after action report.


  • Problems with players getting into multiple sessions.

Each of my three sessions of Swords had four seats at the table. My ideal set-up would have been two folks who played in all three games, one person who played in two, and four folks who popped into one game each. What I had in actuality was one person in two sessions and ten folks who played one game each. Not even close.

Part of this issue arose from the fact I didn’t flag explicitly enough in the description that this was a continuing game. I said it clearly, but the way folks read these descriptions you have to shout. The problem with that is if I shouted too loudly, people would think it was an all or nothing affair, which is leaning too far in the other direction.

Another part of this issue arose from how Double Exposure cons do their scheduling. It’s unique, and quixotic, and well discussed elsewhere. Suffice to say, I had several folks come up to me and say “I signed up for all your sessions and only got into one,” and suchlike.

This situation didn’t hurt our story too much; after all, it was conceived as an anthology. The main problem with how this worked out is I had to teach the game in depth at every session. For a game like Swords that has a serious learning curve, this was draining. Added to the other draining factors (see next bullet point), and I left the con properly soured on Swords. I know, me soured, what?


  • Teaching, then re-teaching, then re-re-teaching...

My paying job is as special education teacher, so I definitely understand that re-teaching is going to be required when any novel concept is presented. What I didn’t understand was that (1) I would have to do more initial teaching than expected (see above) and (2) some folks would be resistant to learning.

I mentioned above there were several draining factors to the Anthology, and the second major one was the players who weren’t playing by the rules. I don’t mean that they were cheating necessarily, just that they couldn’t - or wouldn’t - abide by Swords’ strict narration guidelines. By this I mean taking definitive action and narrating for characters other than their Rogue without tossing the dice, as well as inserting enough slipping and struggling to take chunks of time from the spotlight player. Some folks needed a gentle reminder to not do this; others didn’t stop.

There was a domino factor to this, where folks realized that they weren’t going to get the dice again for a while and when they did they’d be spoken over, so they hung on to narration as long as they could. The only rational response to that for other Rogues was to do that same, and we ended up in a narration escalation. The third game of the con lasted for four and a half hours. We weren’t aiming for speedruns, but I was hopeful to get two tales in a slot, or at least head to the bar early. Instead, I ended up exhausted and empty.


  • The map phase has potential.

When I posted on Google Plus about running the Anthology, Eppy sent me the rules for (parts of?) a new phase called the Chronicler Phase. I wanted to have a map as a touchstone for our Rogues and this phase promised to create one. It essentially works as a Rogues phase, but instead of demands about other players’ Rogues, you make demands about the map. “Draw for us the walking castle of Count Oglethorpe.” “Tell us of the burial practices of the Sky Wardens.” “Define for us the sigil to warn traveller’s of sorcerous routes.”

The phase created a very fruitful map for us that directly influenced our Rogue creation as well as our Tale. However, given how new the players were to Swords, it was a bit of heavy lifting right there at the beginning, especially as the Chronicler Phase has Stymies, Mysteries and Morals that don’t function exactly the same as in the other Phases. Still, I found this a useful procedure and was glad to have it.


  • Both our tales and our tome were compelling.

Despite our difficulties, the big experiment of the Anthology was a success. Each individual session had a (more or less) satisfying tale, and there was an overall arc to all the tales that would make a decent novel.

In session one, we had a griffin Rogue, who had come West to see what was happening to his people’s disappearing eggs. Turns out they were being ground up and snorted for their narcotic properties. That must have been an awkward report to the griffin kings.

In session two, a party went East to griffin lands to patch things over with the griffins. Instead, they poisoned one of the triumvirate of kings and set the two great species on the brink of war.

In session three, another party went East as an advance party for an assault and ended up meeting with all three griffin kings (deceased included), before the purest-hearted of them got a seat on the griffin council and held hostilities at bay… for now.


  • So would I do it all again?

I learned a lot from this experiment: both about myself, and about the game. But ultimately, no, I would not do it again. At least not at a convention where scheduling practices could cause me to have to teach the game so repeatedly. Swords is not simple to pick up, and the process of teaching it over and over left me limp. However, I would certainly run Swords as a campaign given the right group of players. And, you know, given time to recuperate from this experiment!


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By Keith Stetson 09 Dec, 2017
After the success of its Kickstarter, I've moved Seco Creek Vigilance Committee over to Pledge Manager. Even if you missed the crowd funding, you can still get in before the book goes to press. Retail copies will be available after the fact, but they will be limited, so pre-ordering is a good idea if you're afraid of missing the game.
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