Hello,

I've been telling some friends about TSOY, trying to convince them to play it. They all come from a traditional-RPG background, with all the assumptions that that entails. So, I decided the best way to explain the differences of TSOY was to write an explanation of how it is played.

PLAYING THE GAME
If you’ve played RPGs before, you might be tempted to skip over this section. After all, you know how to play a RPG, right? Not so fast. This game probably does things a bit differently from what you’re used to.

You the player and your character are very different and separate. Now, that might sound obvious; after all, the character is just a construction in the game world, not a flesh-and-blood person. But this has a few consequences.

First, let’s consider character knowledge and player knowledge. You the player might know some things that the character does not know. For example, Wil and Susan are playing their characters, Wolf-Snarl and Skala. Wolf-Snarl has been beaten up by some thugs in a bar and he’s been thrown into an alley. Susan the player saw the fight between Wolf-Snarl and the thugs; in fact, she offered many suggestions for the scene. Her character, Skala, was not there. Here, Susan knows things that Skala does not. Susan can use that information to create more interesting stories. She could have Skala wander by that alley and see Wolf-Snarl lying there. Or maybe she makes Skala wander by that alley and tragically never see Wolf-Snarl at all. Or maybe she does something completely unrelated. All of these options are totally cool.

This raises another important point about goals. In the example above, Skala is Wolf-Snarl’s friend and would want to help him if she knew he was hurt. But Susan wants to create the most interesting story she can, and if she thinks that having Skala find Wolf-Snarl is boring, she won’t want Skala to find him. In this case, the player and her character have conflicting goals. So what should Susan do? She should follow her own goals even if that means that Skala’s goals are left unmet. In fact, it’s often really cool when character goals are not met. Think of books you’ve read; how interesting would they be if the hero got the girl in the first chapter?

So what sort of goal should you have to get the most out of The Shadow of Yesterday? You might be thinking the answer is “to have fun”. Duh! But what’s most likely to lead to fun when you’re playing this game is to try to tell cool stories where characters are forced to make tough choices. Choices like:

• “My character wants to take revenge on an enemy. Is he willing to sacrifice himself to take that revenge? Is he willing to sacrifice a friend?”
• “My character wants wealth and power. Is he willing to hurt someone else to get it? Kill someone else? Even if that person is completely innocent?”
• “My character wants to help the helpless, but he’s also a coward. Is he willing to run into a burning building to save someone? Or would he abandon them? What about face down an angry swordsman? A crazed bull?”

You might be thinking, “That sounds like my character is going to get into trouble a lot. Isn’t that bad?” No, it’s great! Your character probably doesn’t want bad stuff to happen to him, but that’s what good stories are made of.

Another thing to keep in mind is that your ideas are important. Feel free to offer suggestions about the names of new characters, the success or failure consequences of ability checks, the descriptions of countries, or anything else that strikes your fancy. You should never feel stifled. But everyone else should have this freedom as well, so you should always be willing to accept ideas from other people. Discuss it as a group, come to a consensus, and then have a blast.

I think this is a really great writeup that addresses some of the key techniques that many "new style" RPGs promote, and which are useful for fun play of many "traditional" RPGs as well.  So I say good work!

I totally dig this, and may steal it for myself, if that's ok.

I like it a lot too!
What's more, while it points out differences between traditional roleplaying and TSOY, it will still work very well for complete newcomers, as you didn't use any gamer jargon.
And it can be applied to lots of narr rpgs.

Great stuff! Mind if I snatch it for my own use as well (maybe even translating it to french)?

Ricky wrote:
You might be thinking, “That sounds like my character is going to get into trouble a lot. Isn’t that bad?” No, it’s great! Your character probably doesn’t want bad stuff to happen to him, but that’s what good stories are made of.

First, anyone who wants to steal this may do so. I'm glad people like it.

colin wrote:
You could mention at this point that TSoY makes it very difficult for a PC to die randomly, without the player having had many chances to give up on the fight. So it's okay to set a character up against lots of trouble.

The other way that TSoY supports this style of role-playing is by explicitly giving xp for following your own goals for your character, whatever they might be.