2 min read

Roleplaying has a weird problem as far as products go. More than just being a book to be read, it also functions as a technical manual. Taking an interest in the system requires that GMs get savvy with the technical aspects and the lore aspects; an easy enough task for folks who like to read these kinds of things, but harder to find a group to undertake this task.

Many who are willing to read, fail to get others into the game. Roleplaying, despite booming louder  than ever, has a name brand product that doesn't onboard so much as it baseball bats new players into submission.

Listen, this is a long-running problem, and the traditions that have resulted because of this have left weird tastes in our collective mouths when we encounter new games. We expect modifiers, we expect success numbers, we expect 1's and 20's. While others in the scene have revisited these cliches to find out if this stuff is like, actually fun, lots of bigger name games have kept on. One of our genre tropes is crunchiness.

Quest, is not the first to cut, they're not even the simplest roleplaying game in town, but they do seem to be the loudest part of the conversation at the moment.

For new roleplayers a main ticket question is how the heck do we get the party together. For most folks this is done by vomiting a 20 minute worldbuilding lecture, then 20 minutes after that we get to learn how to play. Fuck that. We're getting into mechanics early, we're introducing characters, and we're figuring out how we all know each other. We can put the rest of the worldbuilding on the docket later.

Thus is born a single spread adventure called Cyprian's Sieve. This bootstrapping action is made to be run with almost no prep, it's world agnostic, and functions as a tutorial for combat. It includes 6 NPC encounters, and one boss fight. If you're looking to turbocharge your starts maybe this will be the way to do it. I don't know, I'm not your dad. Find it here.

Matthew Getch

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