This week’s episode of Dice Exploder can be found here.
What if your D&D adventuring party settled down and opened a tavern, and the vibes went from dragon murderers to Bob’s Burgers? That's my pitch for Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern, one of my favorite RPGs. It's currently on Backerkit, and you should check it out.
This week I'm talking about a super simple unnamed mechanic from Stewpot, and presumably other games before it, that's inspired much of my own work: everyone goes around and adds a detail about the scene at hand or whatever we're talking about. Simple but effective.
I think of this mechanic, and Stewpot generally, as especially welcoming to people new to the hobby. And so I brought on my favorite new to the hobby person: Lee Conrads, acclaimed theater director (there's a lot of theater and audience theory in this one) and also my spouse. It's a very special episode.
Further Reading:
The Stewpot backerkit campaign
Great Reckonings in Little Rooms
Comedy Book by Jesse David Fox
Socials
The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com
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Transcript
Sam: Hello, and welcome to the season three finale of Dice Exploder. Each week, we take a tabletop RPG mechanic and settle down with it for good. My name is Sam Dunnewold and my cohost this week is Lee Conrads.
It's been a long and fun road this season. Thanks again to everyone who helps crowdfund it. We'll be back with a few treats for you over the next few months, maybe even a lot of treats, and I'm hoping to premiere season four in August or so.
But before that I have one last backer of reward to fulfill for you this week. Evil Hat, the indie RPG publishing company, was kind enough to pledge to the season three Kickstarter at a tier where they could pick a game or mechanic for me to cover on an episode. And I was delighted when it worked out for me to do a show about Stewpot tales from a fantasy Tavern. By last week's cohost, Takuma Okada. Evil Hat is publishing the game and a crowdfunding campaign for it is live on backer kit now.
I love this game. Stewpot. It's so good. What if your D and D adventuring party settled down and opened a tavern and the vibes went from like dragon murderers to Bob's Burgers? It's such a welcoming and accessible game for all comers, whether that's story gamers, D and D players or people new to the hobby entirely.
I really struggled with who to bring on to talk about all this, but once I thought at today's cohost, I knew they were the perfect person.
Lee Conrads is a theater director whose productions ask big questions, wrestle with paradox and stage impossible things. They have an MFA from Northwestern university and our on-staff at Circle X theater in Los Angeles where they run the Evolving Playwrights Group, a program dedicated to developing groundbreaking and provocative new plays. Lee's directing credits include Indecent, Vinegar Tom, and Three Sisters, as well as assistant directing at the Steppenwolf theater in Chicago, Mixed Blood in Minneapolis and the Hudson Valley Shakespeare company in New York.
Also, we are married.
Lee's relationship to RPGs is super interesting to me. They're simultaneously very new to the forum, but also so smart about live storytelling in general and full of the random game facts and theories that I'm rambling about at any given time. It made for a really great conversation.
We kicked around a couple of potential mechanics from Stewpot to bring on the show, but we ultimately settled on the one I've stolen for nearly every game I've ever designed. I'm calling it everyone adds a detail. It's not a formerly named mechanic in the game, it's just a simple thought tacked onto the end of another instruction, but it has huge implications for how the game plays out.
Okay this intro is way too long. Let's get to it. Here is Lee Conrads with everyone adds a detail from Stewpot. Lee Conrads, welcome to Dice Exploder.
Lee: What up, nerd?
Sam: What are we talking about today?
Lee: Today we're talking about Stewpot. Yeah. And the everybody adds a detail mechanic.
Sam: Yeah, so normally I ask my co host, why did you bring this mechanic? But you did not bring this mechanic. I sort of corralled you into being here today. So how do you feel about being here today?
Lee: I'm excited.
Sam: All right.
Lee: I'm glad to do this.
Sam: So why don't we start with what's your relationship to RPGs like?
Lee: Sure, I think my relationship to RPGs is exclusively or almost exclusively via you which I think means that my experience of RPGs is somewhat unusual in that I have played very few of them but have spent a lot of time absorbing a like highly technical deep dive on RPGs.
Sam: Yes.
Lee: So I feel like I know a lot about RPGs for someone who has played relatively few sessions of RPGs. Yeah. And none of like, the big names. Like, I've never played, have I played D& D? What was the thing that we played with Heather?
Sam: That was fate. We played D& D with cousins at Christmas once.
Lee: I wasn't there.
Sam: Oh, you weren't there.
Lee: Yeah. So I think I have truly never played D& D proper. Yeah. And like the games that I have played are the weird indie ones that you and your Dice Exploder friends love.
Sam: Yeah. Like For the Queen.
Lee: Like For the Queen.
Sam: I would say you've played a lot of For the Queen.
Lee: Probably that's the one that I've played the most of.
Sam: But also, Stewpot. So, Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern, is a game that is clearly taking the trappings of fantasy Dungeons and Dragons, the aesthetics around Dungeons and Dragons, and being like what if instead of going and murdering a bunch of people in a hole in the ground to take their money we opened a bar and hung out and otherwise everything was the same.
And it's very cozy. Like I remember playing it with David Block from the We Are But Worms episode, and him saying, this game feels like Bob's Burgers. And I think that's maybe my favorite description of the tone of the game. It is very chill and cartoony and low stakes. But trying to still very much be in that Dungeons Dragons generic fantasy kind of world.
And mechanically, it's a Firebrands hack which basically means there's a list of minigames in it, and everyone goes around and takes turns picking a minigame to play, and you just do that a bunch of times.
Have I left anything out or grossly misrepresented anything?
Lee: No, I think that sounds right. Yeah, and I think it is dealing with the transition from adventurer to tavern. Owner, worker,
Sam: worker owner, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Lee: Tavern co op.
Sam: Yeah, exactly.
Lee: So it seems like it is interested in having a relationship not just to the D& D setting but to the like D& D premise even if it's wanting to be in tension with that or moving away from it.
Sam: It's very You could so easily take your D& D characters and stop playing D& D and keep the characters and start playing Stewpot.
Totally.
Lee: I wonder if anyone does that. Or has done that.
Sam: I hope someone does that. So, yeah, what's your relationship with Stewpot like?
Lee: Yeah, I mean, I think Stewpot is like the only setting in which I would, like, enjoy anything D& D related.
Sam: Yeah.
Lee: Like, I have no nostalgic attachment to D& D. For someone who reads a lot of sci fi, I don't read a lot of fantasy. I don't like doing math. And I don't like having things, like, outside of my control. Yeah. And Stewpot, lets me do the things that I am interested in, which is, like, characters, and hanging out with my friends, and appeasing my partner by participating in his hobbies without having to like, do D& D things.
Sam: Yeah. Something you say often is that you really dislike the part of RPGs where you have to enter first person and like, embody yourself in a character, and Stewpot is a game where you can very much stay in third person the whole time. And I actually yesterday recorded with the designer who was like, yeah, I have a really hard time getting into first person in RPGs. I really prefer being in the third person. And I was like, oh, yep. Yeah, of course.
Lee: Yeah, I think that that is, I mean, I have organized my entire professional life around getting to tell stories without having to embody them. And so Stewpot works for my dramaturgical brain. Yeah. Which the like first person RPGs are just too stressful.
Sam: Yeah.
All right. So we are talking about this mechanic that is not named in the game that we're calling everybody adds a detail. It's the very first rule of the game, arguably.
You are sitting down with nothing, you start by creating the location in which your tavern is going to live, whether this is a city or a small town or whatever, and I'm gonna just read text from the book here. So
Location: do you want to compete with other taverns in a bustling city, or do you want to be a little shop in the wilderness, the only place to stay in a small town? As a group, decide the size and scale of your town or city. Then, each player provides one detail about the city or surrounding area. End quote.
And that last sentence of each player provides one detail, about yadda yadda yadda is something that the game comes back to over and over and over in its minigames.
And I just find this thing magical. Like, I started using it in all of my designs immediately after playing it one time. I love the way that it immediately invites everyone at the table in to participate in the game, to participate in the storytelling, and to get invested in what's going on.
Lee: Well, and hearing you read it just now, it occurs to me that the mechanic is everybody adds a detail, but that it's also like, as a group you decide this thing and then everybody adds a detail. Yeah. So that it's like, nicely striking the balance between there are things that we all have to decide together because we are all playing the same game in the same tavern. Yeah. And everybody gets individual ownership over some aspect of this thing.
And it also lets them like if there are things that you need for your character to do the things that you want to do, you can make sure those things happen without having to worry about, is someone else going to set it up for me? Is the DM going to like, go on some other tactic? It sort of gives people a little bit of control over their character's destiny.
Sam: Yeah. Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is the idea of putting things into the game that are gonna push other people in like the ways they want to be pushed or to give them toys to play with. And this allows you to like give yourself your own toys, but it also allows you to do that of like when you add a cactus, I can add, oh, also rafters are full of balloons. And I can push on your thing or riff on your thing just as much as I can sort of like bring in my own thing to play with. And we're all going to be happy regardless because we all like have our details in there.
Lee: I mean it feels a little bit like it's a mechanism for I mean you and I talk often about like RPGs are basically grown ups getting to you know, it's playing guys as adults. But in some ways, it feels like once we have gotten out of the like habit of that kind of collaborative storytelling, this is like a mechanic for adults who no longer have to do a lot of group projects. Yeah. And need some structure around like how to play nicely with their friends.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. It forces sharing.
Lee: Yeah, it's like, well having played a game of it recently, it was really interesting for who in that group that kind of sharing was really easy, and for who in that group it was more challenging, and it seemed like it was really helpful to have a everybody gets a pick a thing, and you don't get to veto those things.
Yeah. That like, Just meant that we didn't have to have an explicit conversation about the culture of the game. Yeah. Because it was baked in.
Sam: Totally. Yeah. The other thing that I am going wild for right now is the phrase culture of play, and you're right. Like this, this totally establishes this culture of play, this, like, specific mechanism for setting scenes, and even as other minigames in Stewpot come back to this and ask people to add details again, there are often times where it makes sense in play for everyone to just go around and add a detail, but the game is not explicitly asking for that in the moment. And every time I've played the game, people just do it naturally. Like, it's such a effective framework immediately, that when you do it one time, people just run with it naturally even in places where they're not being asked
Lee: to. Well, and we had that happen with the, like, Artifacts game, right? Yeah. That like someone who created an artifact in that game realized maybe they didn't actually have a lot to do with that artifact, but they had sort of like gotten caught up in wanting to participate. Because we were in this habit of everybody participating.
Sam: Yeah, yeah. So the, the mini gaming question here is called Shields and Skillets. And if Stewpot at large is about adventurers becoming NPCs, setting down their weapons and picking up their beer steins to clean, then this is the game about doing that with magic items specifically.
And it starts by saying, Who's got magical items that need disenchanting? You're one group of people. And then, anyone else who doesn't have a magic item that needs disenchanting is another group of people. And the magic item people talk about their magic items, the non magic item people tell a little story about each of the magic items.
But as we sat down to ask who's got a magic item, everyone just described a magic item. So some people like figured out they didn't need or want that, and also we then immediately didn't have any people to like do the part of the minigame that is I don't have a magic item because the framework of everyone adding a detail is so powerful that everyone just naturally went to it.
Lee: Right. It also is making me think of the other mechanic that is maybe like tangentially related to this. And I don't remember the exact language, but like some of the games end with everyone can play. And there are other games where everyone does play. But it seems like these sort of explicit invitations to choose your own destiny feels connected to that. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah, and that, that way that Stewpot is so calm and low stakes and inviting at large, part of that comes from the fact that it's always like leaving the door open for people who might not want to contribute. And I think that makes it easier for everyone to contribute. Like in saying everyone can play, but implicitly no one has to, means more people are likely to play.
Lee: Right, and I think that there was even a point in our game this weekend where I realized that like the opt out was implicit, like I was hearing it as everyone should play. Oh, yeah. Because that like, everyone participates ethos is so pervasive.
Sam: Yeah, totally, totally. I love how little this asks of people, too. Speaking of like, being inviting to people who might be uncomfortable coming into games, like, adding one detail is absolutely roleplaying. And also so approachable. So accomplishable. When the first thing that a game asks you to do is to make a character, that's impossible. It's asking you to create an entire new person from very little . Whereas, Stewpot starts from, just add a little detail about this place.
Lee: Well, right, and it can be a detail of any size. Yeah. And like, we have had, this most recent game, often instances of people who shared details later in the going around building off of details that were added early, so the people who immediately have ideas or feel very strongly about where the game goes can add details first, and then other people can use that as like a thing to build on.
Sam: Yeah. Which makes it even easier to accomplish because now you don't even have to invent your whole detail from scratch. You can just add antlers to the thing on the wall or whatever.
Lee: Right. And you have some like establishing things bounce off of or being responsive to. Yeah. As you know, I think a lot about how imagination works and what people need to be imaginative. And often one of those things is other people's imaginations. Like, there's just, like, much more than you can think of when you are working on the springboard of what other people have thought of.
Sam: Yeah. So, as a person who has not played a lot of RPGs and had played even fewer of them the first time I corralled you into playing this game, did Stewpot feel welcoming to you?
Lee: Yeah, I mean, I think like I have not, and I think there's maybe partially my relative inexperience with playing games, but for me the issue has never been that they feel unwelcoming per se, so much is like the thing that I think a lot of RPGs are asking you to do are not the things that I am like excited to do with my relaxing time.
Sam: Sure
Lee: But it I think Stewpot in particular does feel really approachable and manageable. Yeah. And to the point that we've sort of already made you have a lot of choices about sort of like how deep you want to go. It seems like people who do want to sort of like be in first person and do the voices can do that. And someone who just wants to like sit around casually with friends can do that.
And like, my experience has been that the like much more casual version is also really fun. Like it doesn't feel like I am playing on a lighter mode. Yeah. And that I have gotten really sucked into it in ways that I think I would have not necessarily expected.
Sam: Yeah.
Oh, another piece of everyone making an offering to the nature of the tavern or to the scene or to whatever it is that I really like is that the scene invariably ends up surprising for everyone without involving any randomness. That because I don't know what's going on in the heads of Greg and Aoife over there who we're playing with, when they add their details I get to be oh cool I hadn't thought of that, like about whatever it is that they're doing and so in addition to everyone sort of having their piece of ownership over the fiction, everyone also gets to be a little surprised by the fiction.
Lee: Totally, and I think like also has to be surprised by the fiction. Like, no one person gets perfect control over the circumstances of the story. It's interesting. I'd like almost, if I had more experience with RPGs that involve more dice rolling or more randomness, like in some ways I'm curious, does the randomness injected by the dice feel different than the randomness injected by other people?
Sam: I think the randomness injected by dice feels naturally high stakes most of the time, because typically when you're rolling dice it is in a moment of tension. Maybe some games, you know, you're rolling dice when you're making characters to decide features of your characters or whatever, and there you're just kind of doing it for fun to like see who the person is that you're gonna end up playing. But when you're rolling dice in the middle of the story in 95 percent of games it is in a moment of tension and action, and that feels extremely opposite, in a lot of ways, to the procedure we're talking about here in Stewpot, where I can be surprised and delighted about what it looks like to walk down the street here, rather than whether I'm gonna die.
Lee: Sure, right. Well, and I also wonder if you like think about dice in that more like character creation generation phase if it is easier to be invested in details that your friend came up with because presumably you're playing a game with like people you like and whose ideas you care, that sort of like details that you just sort of get given through a process that feels a little bit more sterile.
Sam: Yeah, I, I'm thinking now of, there's another Firebrands hack called The King is Dead by Meguey Baker, which is sort of a Game of Thrones version of this game. And the way character creation works in that game, is you sort of come up with the basic premise of who your character is, and then everyone else at the table tells you one word about your character that is how their character sees your character. Or maybe it's just true of your character, you get to kind of interpret it, but it makes you cede control of your character creation to other people and simultaneously does work to establish all the relationships between everyone at the table, and does exactly what you were just talking about of it gives you randomness the way dice might to help define your character but also more so because it's not just randomness it's also this insight into the other characters this insight into the other players and what they're going to be interested in and then this fun little new thing for you to play with on your end.
Lee: Well, and it also seems like it makes those details harder to discard.
Yeah. Because like, if you're given an attribute by a roll of the dice that feels like it doesn't fit or you're not interested in, I'm assuming would be relatively easily to just like pretend like it didn't happen and focus on other parts of your character. But if it's an idea that a friend has, someone who you're playing the game with, it's harder to just like, ignore that.
Sam: Yeah.
Lee: And in the context of Stewpot, where everything is sort of coming out of the seed of what's the thing that we decided together about this tavern , all of these details are more likely to be things that we're all interested in because they're connected to that, or be things that we're, like, excited to play with because we all picked together what the, like, larger umbrella of the tavern is.
Sam: Totally. We've talked a couple of times here, I don't know if we've put it this way exactly, but about the way that the story is bigger than any individual person at the table. Like, this is the fundamental thing of roleplaying games, is that you are collectively creating this imagined story and world and space that is bigger than all of you. It's this communal, magical thing. And first of all, this mechanic is the purest way to get to that as quickly as possible I've ever seen. And that's amazing.
But I was also thinking about how that sort of describes the experience of going to the theater, where as an audience, you... I read this like book about stand up comedy theory recently, and they talked about how you go to the stand up comedy, you go to the theater and the audience like congeals into a single entity. And like being a part of that single entity, that single thing is this like transcendent experience and wonderful.
And In the theater, you don't have to participate in the same way. Like you do have to participate. Like it can't be done without you. Like you, your presence makes it possible, but you don't have to contribute to the fiction in the same way. But I do think that there's something magical here that feels comparable to that theatrical thing about like giving part of yourself to this shared collective that we're creating together at the table.
Lee: Yeah. I mean, this feels like the part of the podcast where I'm like contractually obligated to cite Great Reckonings in Little Rooms.
Yeah. Which is by Berto States, which is like the seminal book on semiotics and phenomenology. Um, Am I the first person to say phenomenology on Dice Exploder?
Sam: I think probably, yeah.
Lee: But exactly what he's talking about is like the sort base unit of theater which is like, a production uses a symbol like a chair, and in the mind of the audience it becomes a throne. And in a theater audience, every one of those thrones is slightly different. Yeah. And I want, you know, like in an RPG, every one of those thrones is slightly different, but there's also like a little bit more of a shared throne? In some ways because everyone has added a detail to the throne.
Sam: Yeah, well, and I think the big difference in RPGs is that sometimes you'll be playing and it will become clear that the fact that the throne is gold in your head and silver in mine matters. And now we can stop and clarify and like bring our thrones closer in alignment, and that's not possible in theater except by accident. Like the audience can't stop and be like, wait, what color is the throne? Like only if it comes, if like I got it wrong and then it comes up in the play, like is that experience going to happen?
Lee: Right. Yeah. It's a more like dynamic in the most value neutral way possible because I am not willing to concede that RPGs might be objectively better than theater in some way.
But like, it is a more dynamic in that it changes. It is. and responds to the inputs of the other people in the group than a theater going experience.
Sam: Yeah, well, I don't think that responsiveness is necessarily a good thing, right? Like, I Right, that's what I mean. I'm out here on the movie team, really. Like, so yeah, totally.
How does that experience of adding a detail, like everybody adds a detail, compare to running a production, you know, to every designer making a contribution in theater to like the process of making theater.
Lee: Yeah, I mean, I think like, to me, the big difference between RPGs and theater, and like, one of the things that I think pings on and sometimes makes playing RPGs stressful to my telling stories for work brain is that you get to edit theater. You get to like refine and polish and there's like a finished product. Whereas if that sort of thing happens in RPGs, it's a little bit more ad hoc and we're not like driving towards a finished polished thing.
And so it feels like what an RPG and what the, like, everybody adds a detail feels most like is a really early generation phase where we are just all adding details and we're sort of not editing in any way yet. And we're just what the great Michelle Lilly calls bad idea first mode. We're just. Piling all of the ideas on. Yeah. But because as a director, I am a responder usually rather than a generator, just being in generation mode is like the mode that I'm a little less comfortable in sometimes.
Sam: Totally. Speaking of comfort, transition.
Lee: It's almost like you're a professional
Sam: at this. Oh my god. Another thing that I do like about the baseline Stewpot everyone adds a detail mechanic, is that once it's an implicit part of your culture of play, then you're regularly checking in with everyone at the table to make sure everyone's having a good time, or at least is comfortable. That in games without a procedure, where you like, go around the table and like, check in with everyone, it is much more on the humans at the table to go around and make sure that everyone's having a good time. And friends do that, like, I, I that still happens. But there is something really nice about this mechanical tool that's already adding a lot to the game naturally having the side effect of making sure you check in with everyone.
Lee: Right, I mean it feels like in some ways a good beginner RPG in that it, almost like teaches that way of playing.
Sam: Yeah.
Lee: And also, like, good for people who are transitioning from something like D& D, which is much more hierarchical, to the more democratic way of playing RPGs when you need a little bit more scaffolding of sort of the yes and mode of playing.
Sam: I feel so validated that you've been listening to my screeds about D& D for all these years.
Lee: I mean, there have been a lot of them and we have been together for a long time.
Sam: That is to say that I agree with you. Yeah. Yeah.
Lee: Yeah. But it's and I also sort of have a maybe like tangentially related thought about like gender politics and who that kind of skill of collaboration and room reading and checking in is easy for and some generalizations about who plays D& D.
Sam: Yeah.
Lee: But it's like, it is interesting to me the of the group of people that we are playing with this weekend, like, very small sample size, obviously, everyone except us was new to Stewpot, and like, the people who had the hardest time with that yes and mode, my perception of them is that they are people who are both like, very bought into D& D and male adjacent, at least.
Sam: Yeah.
Lee: Like it seemed like, cause in some ways I think Stewpot can like really easily withstand a person who wants to go off and do their own thing. Like that's one of the things that seems like one of the things that makes it accessible. Yeah. To me, what was more challenging was the like, in the everybody added detail phase, someone sort of like needing to, comment on or edit or tweak the details that other people were adding.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. We haven't talked much explicitly about how Stewpot doesn't a DM or a GM, and much of the way it's able to I mean, in some ways it's weird that a Game Master or a Dungeon Master is the default, that like one person is sort of in charge. It does kind of just make more sense that the default way of playing pretend with your friends is that you would all show up and like, make shit up together. And like, it would be like...
What?
Lee: Well, I just think that you are saying that as someone who is, like, so bought into the indie, commie way of playing games, and you aren't, like, an investment banker who leads meetings, who
Sam: I'm thinking back about kids where like, if I, when I went and played with my friends, like made shit up, that was typically a very collaborative exercise.
Lee: Right, but we're not kids anymore. Like we grow out of that way of thinking about the world. And I think as an adult, our default state is to have a leader and a plan. Yeah, okay. And like we do need structures and mechanisms to return us to that childlike state.
Sam: Okay, you got me.
Uh, yes. So anyway, this game doesn't have one. Uh, And I, I think that this tool of everyone adding a detail, that everyone contributing and everyone taking on part of that role of being the GM is how it's able to get away with that. Like, in some ways, the designer of the game is your GM, is providing you with these like frameworks for what kinds of scenes are available for you. Yeah, clear. And what happens within each of them.
Like, the scene A Friendly Tavern Brawl starts with, oh, there's a brawl, and then immediately asks, who's deescalating? And then there's a very specific beat by beat process to go through to deescalate the brawl, and every time you have a tavern brawl, it's going to deescalate and end up okay. And that helps a lot.
But I also think that this particular mechanic of everybody adds a detail does a huge amount of work of, again, establishing in the very first mechanic of the game, everyone can just chime in with details about the world whenever it makes sense to you. Like, everyone can, or whenever it's their turn, everyone has the authority to do that.
Lee: Right. Well, and this is great because now I get to drop my other favorite theater theory reference, is Michael Rhodes continuum of collaboration. So Michael Rhodes is a theater artist who works primarily in devised theater, which means that they aren't starting with a script text. And it, happens to be that many of these processes are very democratic, but they don't have to be.
So he talks about the continuum of collaboration, where on one side of the spectrum, you have consensus and on the other side of the spectrum you have like authoritarian. So D& D is authoritarian, and like, I imagine that no one is making a pure consensus RPG because it would take you 700 years to finish playing it and that's what we have Quaker meetings for.
Sam: I mean, there are people, there are Quakers making that game, but, but yeah. Yeah.
Lee: And so something that Michael talks a lot about is like, one of the things that makes a devising process succeed is like being really clear in every moment about where on the continuum of collaboration you are.
And it feels like that's the thing that the structure of Stewpot is doing is because we don't have the GM, we don't have that authoritative figure, the immediate question is like, who decides? And the rules of Stewpot are , Answering the question of who decides in any given moment of the game.
Sam: Yeah, that's that's game design, baby but also I think whenever I start having this conversation I I just, I've been struck like six times in this how much theater theory everyone on the Dice Exploder Discord should like, go get into now.
Lee: Yeah, I can make you a bibliography.
Sam: You uh, listen, there's a show notes, I'm sure, we've got Comedy Book Jesse David Fox down there already from my end, yeah.
But every time I end up having a conversation like this one about authority in roleplaying games, I think about how when you have a game like Stewpot that puts you at that very consensus end of the spectrum, how much of that is we are at the consensus end of the spectrum, and how much of that is, we're still closer to authority but the person we have put in the position of authority as the designer.
Lee: Totally. I mean, I think like, on the one hand, I want to say authority is not like the ends of the spectrum are value neutral, right? Like authority is not something to be avoided for its own sake in the context of low stakes things like theater making and RPGs, maybe, .Yes, in high stakes things like system of government.
But I do think like even in a Quaker meeting, there is a process for reaching consensus and it's still consensus. Yeah. I think that like, just the fact that there is a structure, because it's a structure that everybody has bought in on, no one's being like held at gunpoint and being forced to play Stewpot, potentially someone is being held at the health of our relationship.
Sam: I was gonna say blink twice if you need help.
Lee: But that like, I think a structure that everyone has bought in is like, that's still a mechanism for consensus.
Sam: Yeah, yeah. And part of me is like, does it matter? Like we've gotten so theoretical, like, do I care? And part of me is also like, designer can never be there in the room with you. Like once you're in the room, everyone's going to play the game differently. You're going to put your own fingerprints all over that thing regardless.
Lee: Well, and I don't even think that Stewpot is all the way to the, like, pure consensus side of the spectrum. Like, in some ways I think, like, Stewpot is maybe in the middle, and in, you know, the other thing that, Michael talks about in his work is it's both about where are you on the continuum and who's holding the deciding power.
And I think the thing that the structure of Stewpot is doing is like, what's the mechanism for how we're going to pass around the deciding?
Sam: Yeah. It makes that really clear.
Lee: Yeah. Whereas like consensus is more about like everyone is agreeing and deciding together, which there are moments of in Stewpot, but I don't think that's the like primary mode of the game.
Sam: Yeah. That, that value neutralness is really displayed in the thing you talked about earlier of how the first decision you make in the game, where is your tavern, is made collectively. And then the second decision is, everyone adds a detail to it, is first a moment of consensus and then a moment of passing authority around the table.
Lee: Right.
Sam: And that demonstrates the difference.
Lee: Yes, yes, that is, that is it, exactly.
Sam: Yeah. Okay, the final thing that I wanted to mention about this is how Stewpot is so much a game about low stakes, and about constantly lowering stakes. That, when you have a tavern brawl, it's going to resolve peacefully. It might take a little bit to get there, but we are funneled in that direction towards a low stakes resolution. Like we are resolving things. We are putting down our weapons and doing something lower key.
Lee: Can I, this might be a semantic quibble, but can I push back on that?
Sam: Yeah.
Lee: I wonder if that is low stakes or high stakes situations in which it is predetermined will resolve well.
Sam: Oh, sure. Yeah.
Lee: Like I think I have been thinking about this game in the context of like, ambition.
Sam: Oh, yeah.
Lee: And I wonder I'm gonna have to pay you. Two hundred dollars or whatever. How much of this game is about doing high stakes things with the promise that it's gonna be okay.
Sam: Yeah, well, and I think of this game as low stakes because it has set itself up against Dungeons Dragons so explicitly that a tavern brawl feels low stakes relative to slaying a dragon.
Lee: Sure.
Sam: And I think that the game is Yes, I also think of lower stakes as being adjacent to, related to, resolving well, and that's not necessarily true. Like, you can have plenty of adult drama movies and plays that are quote unquote low stakes but things don't resolve well and then become high stakes because it's 30 years of family history tied up in them or whatever.
Lee: Yeah, I mean, I would say that low stakes means that Even if it goes badly, the consequences of that bad thing happening are minimal. Versus like high stakes, where the consequences of a bad thing happening are big, but the rewards of a good thing happening are big.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you're right that Stewpot is just always funneling you not towards like a low stakes thing, but towards a happy resolution.
Lee: And sometimes like, sometimes it's low stakes things, but I think it's also, sometimes it's high stakes things. And sometimes it's like, depending on who your character is. Like, the stakes are, it feels like something you also get to take on.
Sam: Yeah. And it feels, I mean to bring it back to Bob's Burgers, it feels like that of the stakes are really high for these people, but also I can watch it on a Sunday night and be kind of chill and not feel like I'm stressed out.
Lee: Right. Cause the, I think the like contract of Bob's Burgers is also that things will ultimately end well. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah.
But that, so I brought all this up because I think that everyone adding a detail also naturally sets up the feeling of things being small. I think maybe that's a better way of trying to say what I was saying in the first place. It's not low stakes, but small.
Like, the Stewpot is about your one tavern and your little found family, and occasionally a guest star will come in, but it's basically just you and your people hanging out. And that feels really small relative again to going out and fighting a dragon or whatever.
Yeah, and Yeah, the everybody adds a detail it brings you all in to that little like smallness together
Lee: Yeah, I mean, I think that's also like one of the things that makes the game feel really manageable. Yeah that you're not going out and slaying dragons or spelunking in a dungeon, or doing your taxes amount of math.
You're just like, running a little tavern with your friends and make some little story beats and you don't have to worry about like, trying to get ahead of figuring out what's gonna happen next. In any given moment, you can just like, What's the next thing? What's the next detail?
Sam: What's the next little thing? Yeah. You should be your little guy. Yeah. You should be a little guy.
Lee: Be a little guy.
Sam: Well, Lee, thanks for being on Dice Exploder,
Lee: Thanks, Nerd.
Sam: Stewpot tales from a fantasy Tavern is live on backer kit right now you can go and you should go and back it immediately.
thanks once again to my beloved partner and one true love for indulging me and coming on the show. If you're in the LA or Minneapolis theater worlds, and you want to get to know Lee better hit me up and I can connect you or go sign up for the Circle X mailing list or apply for their evolving playwrights group.
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And thanks to you for listening all season long. We'll see you in August. If not before, for some fun, special stuff. Keep in touch.