The Play Report Discrepancy

Why having a play report means very little, except when it means everything

Have had a rough couple of weeks, so here’s a rant instead of some actual content.

Purposes of Reports

Why do people write play reports, and why do they publish them? These are important questions. There are two very good reasons and one very poor reason for writing a play report. The good reasons are capturing play results and game-enhancement. The bad one is clout. Reports writing written to capture play results are done to reflect on lessons learned, and tease out issues that occurred in play, especially experimental play (such as seen in the BroSR and its offshoots). Game enhancement reports are done primarily for the benefit of the group and often have a role-play element to them (These may take the form of in character journals, a weekly in-world newsletter from the DM or other diegetic summary of events). Clout reports are written to prove something on the internet. Here is where we begin to see the issues arise. Because a play report, by itself can never provide anything resembling clout, as they prove nothing on their own and are generally not fit for general consumption.

A Necessary Thing

Firstly, for anyone who is actually serious about improving as a game master / referee / storyteller, the experimental kind of play report is absolutely necessary, at least privately. You should be making notes of what went well, what went poorly, new rulings you made, the whole shebang. What is not necessary is that these be published publicly, and in fact unless you are actively developing a new system or pushing some snake oil style of gaming¹ then it’s probably best that these stay within your group. This is for two reasons:

1. Publishing² things on the internet invites critique, which you will be tempted to give ear. But, you do not run games for the internet, you run games for your group.

2. Publishing things takes time, it’s a hobby on top of a hobby. Nothing will burn you out faster than having a fake obligation to publish each weeks play report on time (if you don’t enjoy the act of publishing itself).

Note that above I included “Storyteller.” Even if you are a narrative gamer above all else, this sort of play report can be useful to you. Did you get the tone you wanted right? Were your players engaged in the plot line? The point of the first style of play report is primarily to learn things and save what you learned.

A Fun thing

Secondly, the second kind of play report is fun. I would in fact encourage anyone whose currently engaged in a game, either as a player or a referee, to try writing a “flavor report” and sharing it with the group. This practice has deep roots, going back to the early war-gaming days of role play with our forefathers composing in-character letters back and forth as Napoleon, King George, and other historical and fantastical characters. In fact, composing letters from the point of view of a character is one of the easiest ways to write this kind of play report. Most characters have someone they wish to talk with, even if that’s other player characters. Sharing these items with the group helps to foster a healthy gaming group and make people more interested in the game. Some other examples of a diegetic play report are:

• After Action reports written by the commanding officer in military games

• News bulletins (complete with ads) that mention the characters exploits for modern and cyberpunk games (a la Seth Skorkowsky)

• A running chronicle, especially if delivered by an annoying bard

But again, these are likely best served by staying purely in your group’s discord or papers folder, for similar reasons as above and one more important reason. These create local buy-in. Seeing these reports and artifacts is exclusive and builds group cohesion. It creates a shared secret that is unique to the group and marks it as different from other groups. While a few tastefully selected ones of these accessible to outside will help drive recruitment (if that is desired). They will only do so if they ones surfaced imply a deeper well of hidden artifacts to discover and contribute to upon joining.

The Proof isn’t in the Text

Now that I’ve talked about the positive uses of play reports, let’s look at what they cannot do: prove that you’ve actually played a game or that your game is any good.

We live in an age of incredible fakery, for example:

Party Members:

Zarel – Human Fighter, steadfast and vigilant

Barg – Dwarf Cleric of Moradin, bearer of divine light

Ysthal – Elf Mage, scholar of arcane secrets

The adventurers descended into the forgotten Tomb of Shadows, rumored to house the remains of an ancient and powerful sorcerer. The stone steps, slick with moss and dusted with age, led to an airless crypt where the stench of long-dead magic lingered in the dark.

As they explored deeper, a cluster of skeletal guardians rose from crumbled alcoves to bar their path. Before steel could clash with bone, Barg raised his holy symbol, invoking the power of his god. A blinding aura surged through the corridor—the undead recoiled and fled, their cursed forms scattering into the shadows with shrieks of agony.

With the way cleared, the trio found a dusty treasure chest sealed with a rusted iron lock. Inside lay a glittering hoard:

• 400 Gold Pieces

• A Ring of Protection (+1 AC)

• A luminous saphhiler gem (worth 200 GP)

After appraising the find and dividing the spoils, each hero gained 600 XP, a reward for courage, cunning, and the strength of faith.

ChatGPT was able to generate this report in less than a second. I’ve left in the hallmarks of the robot voice to make identification easier, but it would take only a few minor edits to make this on par with most published play reports. But this issue is much goes further back, people have been lying, convincingly, on the internet for as long as the internet has been around, so play reports in and of themselves do very little to prove that a person actually plays games³. Generally, determining whether someone actually plays games is done, like every other hobby discussed on the internet, through secondary means. Mostly, the online RPG space is pretty good at sorting who plays and who doesn’t, for any given definition of play (A grizzled OSR vet will very quickly determine they have very little in common with the average WoD story gamer and vice versa, even if both play their respective games religiously).

The last point is the most complicated, play reports in and of themselves don’t prove the quality of a game. Some bad games get good reports, some good games get bad reports, it’s such a mixed bag it’s not worth considering except maybe as a third party source for the quality of a given game.

No one cares about your weird dream

Anyone who has tried sharing a dream with another person, or had such a sharing foisted upon them is likely familiar with the feeling of disconnect that comes of one party having something incredibly meaningful to them, and not being able to express or communicate that meaning. Play reports are very similar to this. They are an attempt to capture and express something that is meaningful to a small group, and then share it with a larger one. This is why reading play reports often falls flat, events that are monumental to the group are just data to the reader. Let’s look at what is probably the most (in)famous example of this in the corner of online ttrpg I lurk in, the Muppetlantis incident.

Muppetlantis was a location in the BroSR game Dubzaron in which every NPC was a felt puppet. The play report that first included this tidbit was widely lambasted as proof that all Bro games sucked and were just “patrons do whatever, even if it’s stupid.” But actually, it doesn’t prove that at all. It also does not prove the quality of that game was particularly high either. All it proves is that BDubs wrote a story about an event that might have happened (for the record, it’s obvious that this game actually happened and this report was not a fabrication). I am willing to believe that the Dubzaron crew actually enjoyed this immensely, just as I’ve enjoyed some immensely stupid events in games that no one other than my play group would find engaging or at all interesting. This is why I find the dream analogy so apt.

As another example, let’s look at a section of diegetic report I wrote for the first Hyperborea campaign I played in:

Our travails in Xambala were a success. The Anthropophagi were simply the lowest cast of an insidious snake cult. Clearing out their temple was another matter, and doing so was great deal of trouble. While undertaking it, both Konrad and I were ensnared by a pig demons foul sorcery. Were it not for the quick thinking of my other companions, I likely would be in the bowels of underborea moulding away as a corpse. I was also nearly struck down by a giant water serpent; however Konrad's healing touch was able to bring me back from the brink. I had the last laugh however, and carved a flute out of one of its fangs. In this complex I have acquired a handsome bejeweled short sword. It cuts more cleanly and accurately than even my trusty spear, and I'm sure I've never seen it's equal. There was also a friendly friendly toad witch who we chanced to meet, she offered me some wine much like Inga sometimes makes. Not quite as strong as Inga's and I was able to avoid the usual side effects

There is a fair amount of information packed in here, and several inside jokes from the campaign. However, most people who read this are not likely to find it funny; more likely they will find it a boring, and perhaps slightly pretentious piece of fiction. It also has no information on what the actual sessions were like, and that’s the main point I’m driving at. Play reports are a separate activity from gaming, they take a completely separate set of skills to do well, and even when done well, they are only useful to a small group of people.

Conclusion, if there is one

At the end of the day, this really isn’t a massive issue, just a pet peeve of mine. Claiming that someone has literally zero experience gaming just because they don’t have a long list of play reports publicly available is as asinine as listening to the author of the Elf Slayer green text⁴ for advice on how to run a good murder mystery just because he wrote that green text. Play reports are one metric by which to judge a potential fellow enthusiast, and not even remotely the most important one. With that off my chest, I hope to get some of the new posts out in the next week or two and get back on track, so for now,

Sail On,

-ShockTohp

1. All bloggers, including myself are doing this. If we didn’t think our style of gaming was superior, we wouldn’t write about it.

2. Publishing here means “making available to the masses” not in “releasing a commercial product.”

3. Before someone says “no one would bother faking play reports” yes, some people would. Especially if there was a social reward for doing so. That is just human nature.

4. sauce