The intention of this document is to evaluate the game system of The Silt Verses RPG, a tabletop roleplaying game set in the world of the podcast of the same name. I start by breaking down the core experience and mechanics, and then propose an alternate ruleset which might better support the core experience, or will at least provide a lens through which to critically evaluate the original game system.
The Silt Verses is a straightforward reskin of Brindlewood Bay, with what appears to be all of the mechanics intact. Brindlewood Bay is itself heavily inspired by Apocalypse World, in particular the action resolution mechanics, the ability system, and the narrative-driven gameplay.
My reference for the Apocalypse World ruleset is the game system Simple World by Avery Alder, which condenses the essence of the Apocalypse World system into a ten-page PDF.
The core experience
A game is a framework which supports an experience. The core experience of The Silt Verses seems to be ‘collaborative storytelling and worldbuilding with constraints.’ The constraints are the questions, clues, and scene prompts delivered by the referee, around which the storytelling and worldbuilding must fit.
The expected genre and tone of the storytelling is communicated to the players explicitly through the ‘Setting Explained’ document, the pre-game information, and the Faith Sheets, and implicitly through the themes listed by the safety tools. The overall tone of the world is dark, gloomy, uncaring, and cruel.
The existing system
Action resolution
The Silt Verses uses the action resolution system of Apocalypse World, which is as follows:
This 2d6 resolution system provides an elegant system of diminishing returns for increasing modifier values, along with a natural bias towards success, as shown in the following table:
| Modifier | Probability of 7+ | |
|---|---|---|
| +0 | 58.3\% | \frac{21}{36} |
| +1 | 72.2\% (+13.9\%) | \frac{26}{36} |
| +2 | 83.3\% (+11.1\%) | \frac{30}{36} |
| +3 | 91.6\% (+8.3\%) | \frac{33}{36} |
On top of this, The Silt Verses adds a system of advantage and disadvantage for further modifying dice rolls, where the player rolls an additional six-sided dice and takes either the two highest rolls when rolling with advantage, or the two lowest rolls when rolling with disadvantage. The effect on the distribution of results can be seen on the following graph, where the black line represents rolling 2d6 normally, the orange line represents rolling 2d6 with advantage, and the blue line represents rolling 2d6 with disadvantage.
The median value is increased by 2 when rolling with advantage, or decreased by 2 when rolling with disadvantage, and the deviation of the results is decreased, increasing the probability of rolling a result which is closer to the median value. This makes the benefit provided by advantage and disadvantage closely equivalent to the benefit provided by a +2 modifier.
Resources
- Altar items
Altar items can be used once to provide advantage on a dice roll, in a narratively relevant situation. Altar items are a tool for weaving flavour into the narrative. - Conditions
Conditions impose disadvantage on every narratively-relevant dice roll, and consume verses. Conditions are a tool for adding conflict to the narrative, and for indirectly enforcing consequences. - Verses
Verses represent the lifespan of a character. Verses are a tool for narratively developing a character, and for directly enforcing consequences. - Experience
Experience provides a goal to reach for. Experience is a tool for rewarding the players for telling stories congruent with the themes of the setting.
Abilities
The Silt Verses uses the abilities system of Apocalypse World.
The following table matches each ability from The Silt Verses with one of the five stat categories from Simple World. The text in the description column is paraphrased from the ability description text found in the ‘Anatomy of a Character Sheet’ document.
| Silt Verses | Apocalypse World | Brief description |
|---|---|---|
| Vitality | Aggressive/Forceful | Strength, dexterity, endurance, athleticism, raw physicality. |
| Focus | Reflexive/Graceful | A steady hand, a calm disposition, intense concentration. |
| Insight | Calculating/Methodical | Studying, researching, examining, engaging mental faculty. |
| Presence | Persuasive/Assertive | Charm, intimidate, capture someone’s imagination. |
| Communion | Inquisitive/Exploratory | Actions involving divine forces. |
Alternate system
The inspiration for these rules comes from an opportunity to resolve the tension caused by having the players collaboratively develop the world and story, but having the final word on success come down to the tyranny of the dice. This system asks what it would look like for every mechanic of the game to be subservient to the player-created narrative.
Traits
Instead of five abilities shared by all characters, each character has three traits, chosen by the player. A trait is a neutral description of your character. For example, a character might have the traits direct, distrusting, taciturn.
Actions which would benefit from a trait have a higher chance of success, and actions which run counter to a trait have a lower chance of success. The degree to which a character’s traits affect an action is determined by the referee in the form of an action resolution modifier.
You can change one of your traits when your character resolves a tension at the core of their character.
Altar items
Items provide +1 to any narratively-relevant dice roll, and are removed and can no longer be used if they are used in an action which results in a failure.
Actions
Actions are resolved in the same manner as in Apocalypse World, as a 2d6 dice roll with a modifier, but without the advantage/disadvantage system. A result of 7-9 is a success with a complication, and a result of 10+ is a clean success with no complication. There is no additional effect on a roll of 12+.
Faith moves
There are no experience points. Experience points are a non-diegetic system which exists separate to the narrative and prevents players from using additional faith moves until an arbitrary number of game sessions have passed.
Instead, faith moves are unlocked through worship and sacrifice in the narrative. Piety is tracked through a points system, and each faith ability requires the spending of a fixed number of points, with more advanced moves requiring more points. Worship and sacrifice will involve the loss of concrete or abstract resources, such as items or goodwill. The referee determines the number of points gained through worship and sacrifice.
Using a faith move should always result in a small but permanent negative consequence for the character, changing the character in a subtle way. Every practice has its price.
Impediments
Conditions are now impediments. Impediments decrease the chance of success of an associated action in the same manner as the trait system. They demand attention and shape the narrative.
Impediments can be overcome narratively with effort proportional to the severity of the impediment. The action replay system of The Silt Verses can also be used, with the player spending a Verse to immediately resolve the impediment, if they foresee that the effort required to resolve the impediment will be more trouble than it’s worth. If a character already has three impediments, they must spend a verse to resolve any new impediments.
Verses are about digging into your past in order to find new strength to draw upon and guide you.
Questions
There is no dice roll when attempting to answer a question. A question is answered when the referee is satisfied that all of the available clues have contributed in a meaningful way to the answer, and that the answer has been well thought out. The number of clues required by each tier of question is equal to the complexity value of that question.
Thoughts on running a game
Gameplay which is based around the acting out of actions and conversations incentivises a narrower narrative focus, with moment-to-moment interactions taking priority over discussions, strategy, and worldbuilding. Ideas and actions are presented in a predominantly first-person format, emphasising mannerisms and phrasing over thoughts and motivations.
Unlike with more action-oriented game systems, The Silt Verses lacks opportunities for the referee to provide exemplars of good play for the players. An action-oriented system can leverage the non-player characters for demonstrating the diversity of actions which players can undertake, in the case where the players are being too conservative with action and description, but The Silt Verses is asymmetrical in that the players are alone in creating the world and spinning the narrative, and that non-player characters do not make dice rolls or play with the same rules as the player characters.
There could be a benefit to playing the game with only pen and paper, instead of computer and spreadsheet. The rule system is minimal enough to be easy to follow with just a sheet of paper. The benefit of the computer is that it provides the ability to quickly communicate blocks of prepared text, but it also provides a level of distraction and physically walls off one player from another with a vertical screen. Without the ability to read over blocks of text in their own time, players will pay more attention to the narrative as it is being built, and will be better positioned to immediately interject and respond, to get into the flow of back-and-forth collaboration.
The current action resolution system represents different levels of ability, but fails to represent different levels of difficulty. Difficulty is instead represented through the severity of the consequences of failure.
The consequences of failure need to follow directly from the choice which lead to the failure, and will ideally have an impact on the ability of a character to attempt the same kind of choice in the future.
A rules-light, narrative-driven game necessarily puts more pressure on the referee than a rules-driven, narrative-light game.
Thoughts on player-driven narrative
The world is partially presented to the players by the referee, and it is up to the players to figure out the underlying logic of this presented world in order to figure out how it can be expanded upon. It is much harder to collaboratively build a story on top of this world if the players don’t have a shared understanding of how the existing pieces fit together.
The Clue and Theorize mechanics seem like they might work better for Brindlewood Bay where there is already a shared understanding of how the world works. The addition of gods and magic in The Silt Verses adds a layer of obfuscation to the flow of cause and effect which would otherwise be absent in a more grounded setting.