Press The Beast

Half Cottonmouth hurts your throat

I've been working on getting my next campaign, Gold Horizon, all slick and cottonmouthed up—it's what the cool kids are doing. In short cottonmouth is about:

It's a pretty fun process. Even if your rules are just D&D, it can make a D&D look very different from other D&Ds. You need to answer questions, and answering questions is what makes the point of view of a given campaign interesting—generic D&D is just a big question mark, not an exclamation point.

In OD&D many of the elements other than Armor Class and probably a few other ones are not at all cottonmouth. Yet it's all groovy baby: there's a distance from the mechanics that makes it work. This is the case because shit isn't given dumbass names. Fighters get sweeping attacks (Kind of, there's 5000 blog posts about this) but its not called Sweeping Attacks or whatever. Most of OD&D is like this, a rule and its function is just explained using descriptive language and is often quite vague. This lets the imagination leap and roam—you get to ask "How does this work?" you are invited into the text. Abilities getting names isn't all that I'm talking about, but it is illustrative of my point.

Contrast this to more modern D&D games and you get a different approach. In 5e 2024, for example, dagger's have the "Nick" property which, I will quote at length works as such according to the Roll20 website, which is what people use instead of the ruleset now:

"The Nick property allows you to make an additional attack as part of your attack action whenever you wield a light weapon in both your main and off-hand. But be warned, according to the 2024 Players Handbook, this does not mean you can make a third attack as a bonus action. Instead, this property allows you to free up your bonus action for more tactical moves like spells or whatever else you might have up your sleeve."

...

Who the fuck is Nick and why does he work like this?

You get the point. Giving everything a capital N Name ("I Action Surge and then fist the Gnoll mamma") gives it a sort of discursive fixity that forecloses analysis. A Nick is a Nick and an Action Surge is an Action Surge, and you didn't take Tavern Brawler so you can't fist the Gnoll Mama, sorry Havoc. It's in this weird between space, where "game units" are half cottonmouthed, and it hurts. "My dagger Nicks the dragon" okay!? The dragon doesn't give a fuck about that. Now lets imagine Nick is rewritten, goodbye Nick:

"Characters using a dagger or [list other weapons here] may follow up an attack with another once per round when they wield light weapon in both hands."

Okay now this is good. Now it's simply a description of the rules. We've taken the ball of cotton out of the throat and deposited it in a little jar. We can make Nick into something new, with cute little wings, and he can go do something profoundly wonderful like fund a basketball court in a disadvantaged neighbourhood.

Really cool game The Vanilla Game does most of its rules with plain description and it works, it leaves space for you to make sense of what is happening; where it doesn't (like with Free Attacks) its very clear what it is happening. Very Vanilla—that's that tasty shit.

Either locate your shit in the text or use descriptive language for the rules, don't get caught in the middle. If you get caught in the middle it becomes impossible to imagine what is happening. In Draw Steel the Tactician can Mark enemies which means allies attacking that enemy can do the following:

Mark cannot be imagined, yet it is still presented as a tangible skill—like shooting hoops—that people can learn, and given a name and flavour. Do you see the problem? Who the fuck is Mark?

Don't try to pretend to think that a tabletop RPG is a video game or you will be slapped silly by a fish and done in like Big Pussy, tossed from the back of a boat and drowned in cold water.