In Tim Rogers' very long Boku no Natsuyasumi review, he tells an anecdote about an older Japanese man saying that he felt weird about Tim, an American, playing Boku no Natsuyasumi because "it feels like you're reading my diary".
This is similar to that.
RRPG Firecast, or just RRPG, is a Brazilian TRPG software who manifested out of the ether sometime around April of 2009 - I assume, because this wasn't recorded anywhere easy to check - but it only really started picking up steam the following year, and ever since then it has carved a small but notable niche in the scene.
Growing up in Brasil in the 2000's, you weren't really spoiled for choice of TRPGs. You had some of our resident games, like 3D&T (my first game), Tormenta, and Mighty Blade, but serious RPGs like D&D were quite expensive, and most kids didn't even have broadband internet yet, so the hobby very quickly became a Thing For Adults. This meant that either you convinced your friends to play it with you, or you went online, booting up your Windows XP on an old PC that was probably in the living room in search of people to play with. This is what took many people to RRPG.
See, there's 2 kinds of people who found RRPG: those who wanted a place to roll dice and play with their friends online but couldn't speak English or else they'd have moved to Roll20, and those who had no one to play and also weren't smart or online enough to know about forums and PBP games.
The first kind still exist and make up a sizable portion of the program, treating it a bit like you'd treat a treehouse. They go in there, put on a password to protect against undesirables, and live in blissful ignorance. These people don't matter to us.
The rest, those are the rats. Those are the people rooting around in the sewers in search of something to chew, and it was among those people that I grew up.
A Brief Explanation on the Mechanics
As you can see above, RRPG's interface wasn't what you might call dense. The program is organised around "tables" that work like chatrooms. You go on a big list where each will have an icon, a name, a subtitle which usually tells you what game is played there or what are the usual times, and the number of current users online there; you pick whatever sounds or looks appealing, and you're thrown in the main and often only chat with a little notification for everyone that So-and-So Has Just Entered.
There are some basic commands you can input like /r 1d6 to roll a 1d6 die (which works as a number generator, so you could put 1d49 and it would generate you a number between 1 and 49), /rir to emit a very loud and unpleasant laugh, /nick to change your nickname, etc.
To the right you see a list of those online at the table right now, with the nickname they set and, under that, their login which cannot be changed. In the centre, the text of the chat, following this format:
[22:00] <Nickname> What they're saying.
At the bottom of the screen there's commands, but they don't matter much. What matters is that on the left. That's where the juice is stored.
You see, the creator of the program was one of those treehouse people. He created a basic functionality called NPCs, a formatable (but limited) text document that allowed for basic aesthetic changes, like font, bolding, italics, etc, but nothing too crazy. Originally, this was just meant to house an actual NPC for a game you're playing, but very quickly people noticed you could write anything in there, and that led to one of the main pillars of the culture.
The Actual Culture
Suppose you'd like to play an RPG, but you don't have a group. What do you do?
If you're American, you'll very likely go to your Local Game Shop, talk to people like a normal human being, and ideally schedule a Session 0 so everyone can discuss what the setting is like (a few words from the GM, or perhaps a short Word document if they're organised), and then create the characters. You're probably already familiar with the system - or at least a system - and likely owns one or more books, or can borrow it from a buddy.
If you're on RRPG, this entire process couldn't be more alien.
First off, the big list of tables also informs you if a table has vacancy available for you. Some tables are so highly requested that you may get on a waiting list for when a character dies (!) so you get that player's place.
But alright, you found a table that sorta looks like something you might enjoy, you click on it, and you might send a "Hey there" just for politeness' sake, but most people don't bother with it. What they do is get straight down to business.
On the left column of the table, in the NPCs, it is expected that the GM has written everything needed to play the game. The setting should already be there, along with any factions one might expect to see in the game, possibly in colourful text with images to accompany it, but also the mechanics of the game. Some of the Americans might feel their hair bristling right now, their natural reaction to... Piracy ☠️.
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| This is a good example of how shittily these things could be formatted. |
Sometimes people did copy text from the books they owned or put links for people to download it illegally. Other times, bonkers people translated stuff from English straight from a pirated book - this is how I spent many of my evenings as a 14 year old with nothing better to do. But much more often, people would straight up invent their own systems.
Remember: this is a fanbase of people who may have never had access to D&D, and whose main exposure to RPGs may well have been this program. They came here to learn, saw someone using GURPS, and thought "Hey I can do that too", so they often cobble together their own guerrilla systems out of paperclips and hopes.
The first RPG system I actually got to play was a One Piece-style system where characters had named attacks they would get at random parts of the story (whenever it made sense or, more often, whenever they complained that it had been too long since their last new attack), I would read them and give a random number of d6s as damage, as well as assign a random roll (like 2d6 + Dexterity + Strength vs. 12) and that was it. There were no other parts to the system besides the main attributes, we would just roll 2d6 for anything.
Here's an excerpt titled "Rules RPG War of the Archangels" that me and my friends stole from a real table, translated for your pleasure:
Rules:
· Interactions between players :
it is possible to combine specials (if it makes sense)
it is possible to attack another player (if you roll higher than him on a d20)
it is possible to dodge a player's attack as long as you roll higher than him on a d20
Skills [originally written like this, in English] work against other players
it is possible to intimidate other players ( Depending on your characteristics on the Narrative and the goings-on the Story )
Upon being intimidated by another player, the player "victim" of the intimidation doesn't possess the capacity of attacking his intimidator unless he's attacked by the same in turn
If the plaeyer is intimidated in response to finding out a hidden secret. This secret cannot be shared for a while
If a player rolls 20 or a number above in response to an attack he may counter-attack
If a player rolls 20 or more in an attack ,the attack is done with extra damage
Here's another one:
The RPG will conduct itself in an (almost) exclusively roleplay fashion. The dice rolls will serve only to decide the success of certian actions of import, and they will be made with a basis on the d100 and the difficulty of the task to be done. For example:
.
Very easy task - Needs to roll from 1 to 90 in 1d100.
Easy task - Needs to roll from 1 to 75 in 1d100.
Medium task - Needs to roll between 1 to 50 in 1d100.
Hard task - Needs to roll between 1 and 25 in 1d100.
Very hard task - Needs to roll between 1 and 10 in 1d100.
.
The difficulty of the task will be decided by the stortyeller according to the roleplay of the character and the kind of action he wants to do. That said, it is of extreme importance that the description of the character be detailed so as to establish its technical capacities for the establishment of difficulty of the check in question. The criticals are from 1 to 10 and 91 to 100 for success and failure,respectively.
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With regards to the kingdoms, the character may choose whatever territory on the map beyond those that have already been chosen. For the establishment of his kingdom, the player may choose whatever species of whatever high fantasy scenario and must describe how the society in the kingdom works, the description of its race, preferably with images of it. The history of the Kingdom, its leaders, in what way it is organised must also be described. Regarding the character of the player, he may be of any class and may contain any skill, which includes magic. The description of the character must also be detailed: its history, its profession, motives to come to the kingdom in question, or if he was born there, etc. In this way, the player will describe the character, the species and the kingdom where he lives. The character must be someone of a certain relevance to his society and relatively renowed, therefore he must be described as such.
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ATTENTION: The choices your character makes may affect the kingdom politically and change the course of the game and the politics. Act with responsability, every action will have consequences.
Notice how this all feels very ad hoc. The first one we called "patch notes", because the GM would simply change the rules of the game between every session to fine tune it, and this was considered common practice. Less so these days, as more and more people have access to written games, but back then this was everywhere.
Another very common thing can be seen in the second example: GMs would straight up offshore the responsibilities of building a setting onto the players, basically with an attitude of "you can do ANYTHING in RPGs, therefore ANYTHING is fair game at this table, but I, the GM, hold veto power."
In RRPG, the GM is God is and was a common maxim, because the GM isn't just another player: he's the person who wrote the setting, the mechanics, and most importantly, he's the only moderator at the table.
That's right lads, RRPG has no moderation. Or it didn't, back then, and then someone made a porn table with lolicon and folks had to call the creator of the program to interfere, and now there's a couple guys who have authority over the GM, but you still need to know them and they must still be available when you call.
Back then? If a GM so much as disliked the cut of your jib, they could and would ban you on the spot from their table. This led to many micro-cults of personalities, with sycophants fawning over their favourite GMs not as a friend with whom you share a hobby, but as a genuinely important person and good artist who must be protected!
Anyway, you entered the table that looked interesting to you, you've read the setting and the mechanics, optionally may have even talked to someone at the table (gasp!), now what?
Now you ask for a character sheet. You go up to the GM, either in the main chat or in a direct message, and you ask for a character sheet. Usually the GM will have posted how many vacancies there are, who you might be playing with, and what days and times the sessions will be held. Much more often, people would just ask for a character sheet and, when they notice they don't actually have the time, they'll simply never show up again. Or simply forget that they've ever been here, it's not like there's any way to punish these serial sheet-makers.
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| Character sheets vary a lot in effort and ornaments. Background was a REQUIREMENT, and often needed to have multiple pages. I've had a player give me a 30 page backstory! |
Creating a character sheet is tough business. Some GMs screen their players, asking for an excerpt of "how well they roleplay their character", which usually means giving them a situation and asking them to write an action in response - usually going by how many lines someone can put in a single action. Other GMs don't screen their players at all, simply doling out character sheets to whoever shows up and solving potential scheduling conflicts later.
You've created your character and now you're all done! But that's when we get to what's considered "good roleplaying" and "bad roleplaying", and these aren't fixed in stone, they vary.
Some players play by voice, back then this was usually done via Skype, but they were few and far between - mostly treehouse players. The rest of the rats played by live text.
That is to say, everyone is online at once, but they're writing instead of talking. Back in the day me and my buddies would hop on call during the game and still play by live text, only talking to comment on what was happening, or playing music.
Certain sects of live-text players weren't picky. They played their characters by text like you might do by voice: "I attack", "I search the crates", "I loot the body". Very simple, clear commands, without anything special.
These players were hated by the other, more popular sect, to which I also belonged. To these people, the live message needed to have a certain aesthetic about it, you don't just say "my character does this" like a barbarian! You must adopt these rules:
- Everything should have a different colour. Your speaking voice, your action, and the thoughts of your character are all expressed by changing colours during narration. In the earliest days, the indicator for action was * * (as in * Opens the door *).
- Spoken voice volume must be shown by how many hyphens your action has. - One hyphen indicates a whisper; -- Two hyphens is a normal speaking voice; --- Three hyphens, usually accompanied by ALL CAPS means your character is YELLING!
- You must never, ever ask for clarification. You know the OSR best practices that involve always maximising how much info you have? On RRPG, not only people didn't do that, it was also seen as impolite to badger the GM (who may ban you, remember) about this stuff. Worse yet, it's an indication that the GM didn't put everything he should have in his original narration, a terrible faux pas.
This led to actions such as these (translated from a horribly racist game of Conquistadors, the «!» indicates when the GM was using the "narration voice", as opposed to his normal voice which showed his nickname, or an NPC voice. This GM also used a really bright green, for some fucking reason):
[22:48] «!» Arriving there you could see a fat older man sitting in a very comfortable and red armchair with golden adornments and above his head on the wall the flag of the Portuguese empire laid. His clothes were similar to the soldiers', but more decorated, everything in the Portuguese thematic, red and gold. In front of him there's a wooden chest with a mark of the royal family stamped with old paint. The room had many things, including a table with wine, cheese and some delicious breads, some wooden mugs, very fancy things for a ship.
[22:49] ** NPC: <Pedro Guimarães> -- Please, stay at ease and take a bit of wine and cheese.
[22:53] <Ignácio> "Good rewards?" It wasn't necessary to think or say anything else, he would follow the soldiers through the ship without bothering himself with smells and other discomforts. He was used to worse things in his time, the ship was basically a resort in comparison. Ignácio would be the first to get inside the room, saluting the general in a rustic and unmilitary manner, showing that he wasn't connected or close to these services. He never had this experience. His look around the environs would analyse the gold, the tapestries and everything that was "stealable", but obviously it'd be stupid to try something... For now. Therefore he would stay in silence until the same was broken by Pedro, who would see him approaching and grabbing the cup, pouring some wine and grabbing a good piece of cheese. -- Thank you, general. To what do I owe the honour of your presence? He would bite twice, leaving some remnants of the cheese fall on his beard, without bothering with the mess. Pedro could feel a certain disdain on his voice, would also be confused with its tonality. Without being able to discern if this is just how Ignácio was or if he was taking the piss. -- I'm Ignácio Rodrigues, I knew you had a proposal? Good rewards?
Notice how it took this player four minutes to write that he went inside the room, accepted the offer of wine and cheese, introduced himself and asked about the proposal. Also notice how it doesn't even mention his fellow players. You couldn't tell by this excerpt, but there's actually 3 men being introduced to the room, and this Ignácio isn't their boss or even their leader at all.
This would pass for a good, average-sized narration, written very fast. I've had players who would take 10 minutes to write the same thing, and I've played at a table that prided itself in clocking many, many lines of text.
Notice how there are no paragraphs? This is because of another aspect of play. See, these days RRPG has a text editor that allows paragraphs, just like Discord, but for most of its life, if you wanted to put a break in the line, you had to send the message as it was. But if you did that, the GM would understand that it was his time to act, and he would start writing, and potentially not see that you weren't done yet. This led to a "load as many bullets you can in your gun and shoot them all at once" approach towards gaming - I myself only started experimenting with multiple lines of text being sent (to keep the player reading and engaging instead of waiting for 3 / 4 minutes) circa 2019. Many people still avoid them, while others would write their "actions" on Word and then send them all at once.
And remember: if your character died, you would sometimes lose your place at the table and someone at the waiting list would ascend!
Tables usually also had some laws instituted by the GM, and these eventually standardised a bit into something recognisable to anyone. These are copied from a porn table:
Basic rules
1 - We're here to have fun so don't fight verbally.
2 - Anti-game is forbidden, which is to say using off-game knowledge inside it. EX: You know there's a trap somewhere, and not going there, because your character has to know unless you have a valid argument.
3 - The GM has the last word, but if you think he's wrong you can send a DM.
4 - Let's avoid doing unnecessary thing and focus on the game.
5 - If you have some great idea to add to the game, shoot the GM a DM, he might even reward you.
6 - Avoid taxing the GM because as everyone knows, GMing is tiresome, even more with 10 people sending DMs, so say only what's needed off-topic.
7 - If you have any doubts about a place or something, feel free to ask.
8 - If you copy the system, at least give credit to the creator.
9 - Follow the rules of action [Those rules I mentioned earlier, ** for actions, - For whispers, etc].
Numbers 2 and 3 are the most important.
Number 2 was a prevailing sentiment that using metagame, that is to say player knowledge, was the absolute worst sin a player could commit. People got banned for this. People got into serious arguments and fights over this. For some, it was actually the worst thing someone could do.
Number 3 emerged from the attitude I mentioned earlier, of the deification of the GM. Many of these people were power-tripping teens (or people who act like them) who did not take kindly to players arguing their case. Since many of these tables used shoddily built systems that were never playtested, a lot of which were based around the reckoning of the GM, arguments were a constant.
Out of this crucible, you could either emerge successful with newly found friends, and maybe even part of a clique - usually formed around a Forever GM - or it would crash and burn quickly and you'd go back on the road, a ronin for life.
What did people play in here?
Anime and D&D, mostly. Sometimes anime with D&D rules. These days it's mostly 5e, but back then it was generally 3.5.
By sheer numbers, the most popular thematics are some kind of anime (Naruto, One Piece, Pokémon, and "kitchen sink anime setting" being the dominant ones), while with D&D it's mostly homebrew campaigns. You'll very rarely find someone playing Phandelver or Icewind Dale, but it has no culture of modules or premade scenarios. Those are usually in English, remember, and only a few have been translated.
Anime tables are usually made with the aforementioned homebrew semi-improvisational system, but often cliques end up finding a system they enjoy and applying it to everything. A clique I know is currently trying to make One Piece work with GURPS. It's not going well.
See, the thing with cliques is that a lot of people here don't have a lot of friends who share their interests in the real world. That doesn't mean they're Quasimodos shunned by society at large; just that they usually have no one to talk to about games they like or movies they watch and things like that. And once you find a clique of people who connect with you, you end up doing other activities with them.
To many, "the table" works less like a place you log into to play RPGs, and more like a public Discord server. The clique becomes your friends, you log on every day even if you only play on saturdays, sometimes you even stay on more than one chatroom; a feature you need to pay to access.
When a game of mine ended and we didn't have a "next table" to go to, me and my buddies just made a new, provisional one. Just to hang out.
Hangouttitude is a huge aspect of RRPG. It's a very Old Internet kind of place, where you still have to log on to interact, most people are entirely anonymous, these accounts usually have no link to the "outside world", you won't get notifications on your phone about something funny that someone did once. You just had to be there to see it. You had to be there.
But where's the fucking!?
I wish we had stopped in the previous paragraph.
Games by live text bring something out of people. When it's by voice, in my experience people usually clam up, deflecting with humour and trying to find bathos whenever possible. But when it's written in front of you, far away from the prying eyes of the world, there's a certain freedom.
It's not the cold letter of a few hours ago like a PBP game, and it's not the warm voice of your friend you'll have to stare in the face either; it's the strange absent-presence of text. You know there's someone on the other side, you can see them typing, they're paying attention to you, the world changes with your input; but there's no judgement. There's freedom in the text.
Naturally, people got horny with it.
The other mainstay of RRPG, the distant third after Anime and D&D, is Hentai.
Not Porn. Hentai, specifically, because it usually follows certain tropes.
You see, this porn has dice and worldbuilding. You're not just logging into the chat to jack off with your buddies; you care about this. This has plot, this is going somewhere.
It usually involves a world with a poorly made map, different eras of history (starting with the creation of the world) are told in impenetrable text either loaded with proper names or avoiding them like the plague, with next to no inbetween.
These usually follow some sort of Goddess struggling against some sort of Corruption, but that's barely scratching the surface. There's Hentai tables that are sci-fi, there's those that are slice of life in the sense that they have no plot and just follows people around as they get laid, there was one where you catched monster girls like pokémon to have sex!
These games often had rules - many of which used either 2d6 + Attributes vs. difficulty or 1d20 + Attributes vs. difficulty - which varied in extension. Some had full combat rules, 3 different "Armour Classes" (I have one open right now which has a Defense Class, a Dodge Class, and a Mental Class), as well as many, many races. As many races as you can possibly imagine, often with painstakingly made sub-races, because RRPG GMs loved a good list.
This is what we might call today as "cumbrained" people, those whose porn addiction has gotten to the point where nothing else can be enjoyed without the veneer of sex just under the surface.
But these were not the only places one went to have e-sex; depending on the genre of your game, you might find your players asking for ERP (erotic roleplaying) independently of whether you advised the game as Hentai or not. Horror games, and particularly Vampire games, usually had in-character sex as a built-in expectation.
These tables eventually found themselves becoming a den of queer people of a certain persuasion. If you've been on Tumblr you'll know the one - very hypersexual teens who don't realise they're queer just yet but are in for a ride in the next couple of years; or those who have realised it but don't have the social skills to interact with others without sexuality. And some, I assume, are nice people.
Those raging the most against these tables were usually older gamers from a previous generation, used to putting their sexual tones on their rulebooks, sexualising their women with narrations, but not actually engaging in the act with their homies. These brave, stupid people - some of them young, some who should know better than to be sexting with teens - took the next logical step, and for that they were shunned.
Also because they probably smell, but such is the price of liberation.
Morituri te salutant
RRPG isn't dead. It's not even dying, really. A couple years ago its only major competitor, RPG 2ic, went bankrupt and much of the playerbase migrated to RRPG, but many of the young people have learned English and moved on to greener pastures. It even looks different now - slick, Discord-like, without the dusty Old Internet smell it had a while back.
This program was many things.
It was a den of people who had no concept of playtesting or of personal boundaries; of people who would talk to you for an hour, ask for a character sheet and a place at your table, and then never return; a place where player knowledge was disencouraged in favour of writing with pretty colorus; a place where "I don't do ERP" would keep most players at bay; a place where if your game doesn't have an established IP or if you don't belong to a clique, you might not be able to play.
It is also the place where I spent every single sleepy afternoon, after 6:20 PM when I came home from a high school I hated and met some of my best friends with whom I still talk to this day. It's a vibrant, wild, stupid place where people could simply be creative and express themselves; a little corner from where I could sit with my friends and laugh at how weird everyone else was, knowing full well that others were probably doing the same.
I can't say if I hated or loved it.
Ultimately, I'm just glad I was there.
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| From Boku no Natsuyasumi 2. |
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